She bent across the table eagerly, but she did not reply to the question.
'Will you kill Scrope,' she flashed out, 'and you and I part friends?'
Kelly, even in the midst of this tangle of misfortunes, could not but smile.
'I fear that I may have been anticipated. Mr. Scrope has been watching your ladyship's house to-night--and Mr. Wogan observed him, and, I conceive, has undertaken for him.'
Lady Oxford at that smiled too. 'Then he is a dead man,' she said, slowly savouring her words like wine.
'But his death, madam, will not save your letters,' said Kelly; and the fire died out of her face.
'He has betrayed us both,' she moaned. It seemed she had already forgotten how she herself had seized at the occasion of betraying Mr. Kelly. Kelly was in no mood to debate these subtleties.
'Are you sure?' he contented himself with asking for a second time. 'There is one thing Mr. Scrope has not done. He has taken no measures purposely to insure that your letters will be discovered, since he does not know of them; else, no doubt, he would have done his worst. We two are still engaged in a common cause--your ladyship's. Your intentions in my regard I were much less than a man if I did not forgive, granting (what I now know) your ladyship's erroneous interpretation of my ground of offence, the babbling to Lady Mary. Does your ladyship permit me, then, at the eleventh hour, to save you, if I can find a way, from the odious consequences of Mr. Scrope's unparalleled behaviour?'
'You?'
Lady Oxford's brows were drawn together in perplexity. The notion that Mr. Kelly was prepared to do this thing was still new and strange to her.