Her audacity, her frankness were almost brutal. His bewilderment was subsiding, but he revolted more and more, understanding so little of the horrible tree of which such a woman as this was the poisoned and poisoning fruit.
"Your brother?" he said, withdrawing from her a little farther. "How did he become possessed of them here?"
"My brother!" she cried, laughing. "He is not my brother; his name is Boucheafen no more than mine. My name! I have almost forgotten what it is, I have borne so many that are false; were I to tell you it you would be no wiser. Where, you ask, did he get the chemicals? From your laboratory. We stole them; look, examine, and you will find them missing!"
She stopped, turning with dilating eyes toward the window, as footsteps approached. They passed, and she turned back again, once more drawing a step nearer to him, fascinating him with the light of her brilliant inflexible eyes.
"Sir, listen again. You have been deceived, as I have shown, but you do not know how much. You recollect the day upon which you saw me first?"
"Yes."
"I told you that I had been robbed; it was a lie. The man that you saw attack me meant to murder me."
"To murder you?"
"Yes. Sir, once more. You don't know what they are, these secret societies, these hidden leagues moulded by Russian oppression and tyranny, these cliques, of which hate, vengeance, extermination, are the watchwords. Knowing so well what treachery is, they are jealous of the faith of their members. Death punishes treachery, and I had been treacherous, and death was my sentence. The Cause avenges itself; the appointed man accepted his appointed task. The man who threatened you that night—that old man, our chief—saved me."
George Brudenell passed his hand over his forehead. The feeling which had assailed him when he was a prisoner in the mysterious house assailed him again—the involuntary doubt as to the reality of what he saw and heard. Still with her relentless eyes fixed upon him, she went on: