"No!" was the violent, almost disdainful, rejoinder.
"You did not sleep at your aunt's, for her rooms contained not an evidence of having been opened for a guest, while the hut revealed more than one trace of having been used as a dormitory. I could even tell you where you cut the twigs of hemlock that served you for a pillow, and point to the place where you sat when you scribbled over the margin of the Buffalo Courier with a blue pencil, such as that I now see projecting from your vest pocket."
"It is not necessary," replied the young man, heavily frowning. Then with another short glance at Mr. Ferris, he again demanded:
"What is your reason for stating I visited my aunt's house on the morning she was murdered? Did any one see me do it? or does the house, like the hut, exhibit traces of my presence there at that particular time?"
There was irony in his tone, and a disdain almost amounting to scorn in his wide-flashing blue eyes; but Mr. Ferris, glancing at the hand clutched about the railing of the desk, remarked quietly:
"You do not wear the diamond ring you carried away with you from the tryst I mentioned? Can it be that the one which was picked up after the assault, on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room, could have fallen from your finger, Mr. Mansell?"
A start, the first this powerfully repressed man had given, showed that his armor of resistance had been pierced at last.
"How do you know," he quickly asked, "that I carried away a diamond ring from the tryst you speak of?"
"Circumstances," returned the District Attorney, "prove it beyond a doubt. Miss Dare——"
"Miss Dare!"