"Can you prove this?"
"I'm not at liberty to say."
She smiled faintly, and thought hard. She had learned in that last speech what she most wanted to know—the measure of the Secretary's knowledge.
"Well?" he said, interrogatively.
"I don't know how to answer," she replied. "My intuition says no; my heart says—yes."
The Secretary turned cold, as a new phase of the situation presented itself to his view.
"Do you love this man?" he asked.
"Love Darcy—love him!" she cried. "I hate him more than any man in the world, and yet——"
"You're in his power?"
"No!"