She waved him aside dumbly and tottered to a
couch. His directness had been more merciful than he had thought. She
was stunned, dazed by her calamity. Her very silence frightened the man.
She sat bolt upright, her hand resting limply in her lap and her dull
eyes staring into vacancy. A tiny clock on the mantelpiece ticked
loudly.

"Dead!" she whispered at last. There was no trace of unsteadiness in her
voice and her eyes were dry. She spoke mechanically. "And it is our
wedding-day! Dead! Bob is dead?"

Her hair had fallen about her shoulders, and, beautiful in her grief,
she inspired the man with almost supernatural awe. He had moved to the
mantelpiece and, resting an arm upon it and one foot upon the fender,
remained looking down upon her. He was waiting until the first numbness
of the shock had passed. The little clock on the mantelpiece had ticked
out ten minutes ere she spoke again. But her voice was pitched in more
natural tones, and her face had regained something of its colour.

"How did it happen?"

Haltingly he gave such details as he knew. Her eyes were fixed on his
face as he narrated his story. He hesitated as he referred to his
telephone conversation with her. In her clear eyes he saw challenging
scorn and stopped abruptly.

"You say that Bob asked you to lie to me?" she demanded.

"Not to you in particular. To any one who rang up. I couldn't know
whether he wished his instructions to apply to you."

"No, no, of course not," she interposed quickly, but with a tightening
of the heart he recognised the bitterness of her tone. For all her soft
daintiness, there was something of the tigress in Eileen Meredith.

The man she loved was dead. Well, she would have her vengeance--somehow,
on some one. She was ready to suspect without thinking. And Sir Ralph
Fairfield had laid himself open to suspicion.

"He was killed before eleven," she went on remorselessly, "and you told
me he was in the club with you at that time."

"You don't believe me." He held out his arms to her imploringly, and
then dropped them to his side. "I give you my word that everything I
have told you is true. Why should I lie now?"

She wheeled on him passionately.

"You ask me that?" she said tensely. "You who thought he was in your
way--that what you could not gain while he was living you might take
when he was dead. Do you think your smooth-faced hypocrisy deceives me
now? You pretended to accept your dismissal, pretended to be st