"Very well, let that pass. Did you ever know Count Mellikoff previous to meeting him at the Folly?"
"No, I think not. One meets so many people in the course of one's life; but I am quite sure I had never met Count Mellikoff before."
"Do you know of any reason he might have for enmity against you?"
"No, indeed; none whatever."
"It is very extraordinary," Mr. Tremain continued after this brief colloquy. "I cannot but think there is some other person mixed up in this affair besides Count Mellikoff, some one who has perhaps personal motives to serve in bringing this charge against you. Can you think of any one who has sufficient cause against you to make such a course possible? Any woman, let us say, to whom the blackening of your character would give a vindictive satisfaction?"
"Ah," she replied, with a scornful gesture, and the superiority of a beautiful woman over her plainer sisters, "I cannot follow you there. We all have our feminine enemies without doubt; but who of us can put our finger on the most venomous of them?"
"All the same we must find this one, Patricia; when we find her we shall perhaps unearth the secret of her spleen. I am convinced Count Mellikoff has a woman for his ally."
Miss Hildreth shrugged her shoulders, but made no further reply. Presently, however, she turned a little more towards him, leaning still further across the table, and looking full into his eyes, said, with sudden directness:
"Why do you ask nothing concerning your friend, Adèle Lamien, Philip? Do you not know that she, too, is implicated in this affair?"
"Adèle Lamien!" he exclaimed, taken off his guard by the unexpectedness of the assault. "Good Heavens! what has she to do with all this?"