She was too genuine a woman to treat the letter as I treated it. The insolent familiarity of the language was too much for her self-control. As she looked at me across the table, her hands clenched themselves in her lap, and the old quick fiery temper flamed out again brightly in her cheeks and her eyes.

“Walter!” she said, “if ever those two men are at your mercy, and if you are obliged to spare one of them, don’t let it be the Count.”

“I will keep this letter, Marian, to help my memory when the time comes.”

She looked at me attentively as I put the letter away in my pocketbook.

“When the time comes?” she repeated. “Can you speak of the future as if you were certain of it?⁠—certain after what you have heard in Mr. Kyrle’s office, after what has happened to you today?”