"I was at Professor Darling's house," she declared, with great steadiness.
Mr. Ferris had not expected this reply, and looked at her for an instant almost as if he felt inclined to repeat his inquiry.
"Do you doubt my word?" she queried. "Is it possible you question my truth at a time like this?"
"No, Miss Dare," he gravely assured her. "After the great sacrifice you have publicly made in the interests of justice, it would be worse than presumptuous in me to doubt your sincerity now."
She drew a deep breath, and straightened herself still more proudly.
"Then am I to understand you are satisfied with the answer you have received?"
"Yes, if you will also add that you were in the observatory at Professor Darling's house," he responded quickly, convinced there was some mystery here, and seeing but one way to reach it.
"Very well, then, I was," she averred, without hesitation.
"You were!" he echoed, advancing upon her with a slight flush on his middle-aged cheek, that evinced how difficult it was for him to pursue this conversation in face of the haughty and repellant bearing she had assumed. "You will, perhaps, tell me, then, why you did not see and respond to the girl who came into that room at this very time, with a message from a lady who waited below to see you?"
"Ah!" she cried, succumbing with a suppressed moan to the inexorable destiny that pursued her in this man, "you have woven a net for me!"