I was at my wits’ end to know what line to take. I had had such dramatic proof of Barosa’s methods of testing my good faith, that the suspicion flashed across me that this was just another of them. He and Inez might have patched up their quarrel—if it had been one in reality—and he might have devised this means of seeing whether I meant to keep my promise of silence, before he allowed Miralda to leave the house with me.
My hesitation appeared to provoke the man who had put the question. “Answer at once, you dog,” he said. But whether his anger was real or assumed, I could not tell.
“There is some mistake——” I began.
“You’ll find that out if you don’t answer at once,” he broke in.
“I am an Englishman, Ralph Donnington, and have been kept a prisoner in this house since this morning.”
“Answer me instantly,” he repeated with an oath.
“I have given you the only answer I can.”
The lamp was directed at my face the whole time—the only gleam of light in the whole room. And to me everything was, of course, just one huge blur of utter darkness.
“You refuse to tell me? You will repent it, I warn you.”
“I have answered,” I said again.