"Madame!" I exclaimed. "For God's sake! For if you swoon, alas! I cannot help you."
She recovered herself in a moment, and taking her hands from before her face, looked at me with a strangely softened expression. She rose from her seat, and took a step or two thoughtfully towards the door. Then she stopped and turned to me.
"Lady Tracy, you say, had nothing to do with this quarrel, and yet her likeness was in the miniature case."
I had no doubt in my own mind as to how it came there. 'Twas the case which Lady Tracy had given to Count Lukstein, and doubtless she had substituted her portrait for that of Julian. But this I could not tell to the Countess.
"'Twas a mistake of my friend," said I. "He gave me the case as a warrant and proof, which I might show to Count Lukstein, that I came on his part, telling me his portrait was within it. But 'twas on the night before he was executed, and his thoughts may well have gone astray."
"But since the case was locked, and you had not the key, who was to open it?"
"Count Lukstein," I replied, being thrown for a moment off my guard.
"Count Lukstein?" she asked, coming back to me. "Then he possessed the key. You fought for your friend, Sir Julian Harnwood. Lady Tracy was betrothed to Sir Julian. The case was given to you as a warrant of the cause in which you came. It contained Lady Tracy's likeness, and Count Lukstein held the key."
She spoke with great slowness and deliberation, adding sentence to sentence as links in a chain of testimony. I heard her with a great fear, perceiving how near she was to the truth. There was, however, one link missing to make the chain complete. She did not know that Lady Tracy had owned the case and had given it to Count Lukstein, and of that fact I was determined she should still remain ignorant.
"My husband loved me," she said quickly, with a curious challenge in her voice.