“Let me pass, Sir Conrad.”

He did not move; he was still fixedly regarding her.

“I told you how it would be, Monica,” he said. “I told you Arthur would be sent away.”

She smiled a smile he did not understand.

“Let me pass,” she said again.

His eyes began to glow dangerously. Her beauty and her scorn drove him to a sort of fury.

“Is this the way you keep your promise? Is this how you treat a man you have promised to call your friend?”

“My friend!” Monica repeated the words very slowly, with an inflection the meaning of which could not be misunderstood; nor did he affect to misunderstand her.

“Lady Monica,” he said, “you have heard some lying story, I perceive, trumped up by that scoundrel you call your husband.”