"How can we prove it?" asked Diana coldly.
"By laying a trap for Mark. You know—at least Ercole told me, and I suppose Mrs. Clear told you—that she corresponded with Mark—Wrent, I mean—in the agony column of the Daily Telegraph.
"By means of a cypher? Yes, I know that, but she hasn't received any answer yet."
"Of course not," replied Lydia, with triumph, "because Wrent—that's Mark, you know—is in the asylum, and can't answer her."
"This is all nonsense!" broke in Lucian, impatient of this cobweb spinning. "I don't believe a word of Ferruci's story. If Vrain lived in Jersey Street as Wrent, why should Mrs. Clear visit him?"
"To get him back to Bayswater."
"Nonsense! nonsense! And even admitting as much, why should Mrs. Clear, in the newspapers, correspond in cypher with a man whom she not only knows is in an asylum as her husband, but who can be seen by her at any time?"
"I quite agree with you, Lucian," cried Diana emphatically. "Count Ferruci told a pack of falsehoods to Mrs. Vrain! The thing is utterly absurd!"
"Oh, I guess I'm not so easily made a fool of as all that!" cried Lydia, firing up. "If you don't believe me, lay the trap I told you of. Let Mark go free out of the asylum; get Mrs. Clear, with her cypher and newspapers, to ask him to meet her in the house where Clear was murdered, and then you'll see if Mark won't turn up in his character of Wrent."
"He will not!" cried Diana vehemently. "He will not!"