“Yes—distinctly—that is what I mean.”
“You are no niggard, sir, I see, in your bids for silence. Had not I and Mr Dalston better make a common purse of it, and set up trade together as murderers and blackmailers?”
He drew back instantly.
“You have your choice of refusing,” he said coldly.
“And I refuse,” I answered, with a most bitter scorn. “I am no Esau, sir, though Fate has made me a hunter. Throw dust in your own eyes if you will. For me, I do not stop nor rest until I have probed this matter to an end. Have no fear for Lady Skene. Believing what I believe, the humiliation of your family is the thing farthest from my thoughts. It will not suffer, I think, from the vindication of the truth.”
He listened to my outburst with an expression which lightened from gloom to a certain wonder.
“Well,” he said, “well—if you are prepared to take the consequences of failure.”
“From you?” I cried.
I moved a step nearer to him.
“Lord Skene,” I said, “will you please to look at me? Is there a likeness or is there not? Have not you yourself been strangely conscious of it more than once? Did not Sir Maurice Carnac call me by his name?”