“I do refuse,” she said.

“Do you still tell me to go?”

“Yes. Go⁠—and never come back.”

I walked to the door, waited a moment before I opened it, and turned round to look at her again.

“I may have news to bring you of Sir Percival which you don’t expect,” I said, “and in that case I shall come back.”

“There is no news of Sir Percival that I don’t expect, except⁠—”

She stopped, her pale face darkened, and she stole back with a quiet, stealthy, catlike step to her chair.

“Except the news of his death,” she said, sitting down again, with the mockery of a smile just hovering on her cruel lips, and the furtive light of hatred lurking deep in her steady eyes.