"I agree with you. Why, then, do you usurp the privilege of the male sex?"
"I hate you!" Lady Wyke clenched her fists, as if about to strike him, and glared viciously. "I hate you!"
"I prefer that," said Craver, serenely, and kept a cool eye on her doings.
"Ah"--Lady Wyke looked up to the ceiling--"has this man any feeling? How can he sit there and see a loving woman tear her heart to lay it at his feet for him to trample on."
"Silly! Silly!" was Edwin's comment.
"Take care." The woman bent over him and hissed the word into his ear. "I can hang you!"
"So you say," he replied, unmoved.
"So I say, and so I know," she shouted. "I know that you came down to this house on the night when Hector was murdered. You stabbed him, so that he might not marry that Lemby girl. You escaped on the bicycle. You----"
"Stop. How can you prove all this?"
"Oh, I can prove it right enough. But I don't want to go--to--such lengths." Lady Wyke burst into tears and took out her handkerchief. "I wish you wouldn't force me to--to behave in this way. Oh, my darling, I love you with all my heart and soul, I want to--to----"