The moment she spoke that word, which was the fourth in the series that Stuart had given her, and the one he had selected as a test for this day, Baillie Pegram flinched as if he had been struck, while his face turned white. Hoping that her use of the word had been accidental, or that the emphasis she had placed upon it had been unintended, he asked:
"What did you say?"
"I said," she responded, very deliberately, "that I am ready for the ordeal."
The look of consternation on Baillie's face deepened. Without replying, he walked away in an agitation of mind which he felt must be hidden from others at all costs. Pacing back and forth under screen of some bushes, he tried to think the matter out. Under his orders, he must arrest Agatha and take her to Stuart, who had been more than usually anxious, as Baillie knew, to capture this particular prisoner. But to do that, he felt, must mean Agatha's disgrace and shameful death, and the staining of an ancient and honoured name. Yet what else could he do?
"Would to God!" he exclaimed, under his breath, "that my canister had done its work better!"
Then he fell into silence again, questioning himself in the vain hope of finding a way through the blind wall of circumstances.
"Agatha," he thought, "has been with the enemy, and has been trying to get back again in order to render them some further traitorous service. Stuart has obviously learned all about the conspiracy in which she had been engaged. That is why he has been so eager for her arrest. That is how he knew what signal-words she would use in her endeavour to find some fellow conspirator among us. But why did she use the word to me. Surely the conspiracy cannot have become so wide-spread among us that she deemed me a person likely to be engaged in it. Perhaps she spoke for other ears than mine, hoping to find a traitor among those who stood by.
"And the worst of it is that I still love her. Knowing her treachery and her shame, I still cannot change my attitude of mind. What shall I do? I could turn traitor for her sake. I could manage to secure her escape, and then give myself up, confess my crime, and accept the shameful death that it would merit."
For the space of a minute he lingered over this idea of supreme self-sacrifice with which the devil seemed to be luring him to destruction. Then he cast it aside, and reproached himself for having let it enter his mind.
"No love is worth a man's honour," he thought. "A better way would be to kill her myself, and then commit suicide. No, not that. Suicide is the coward's way out; and killing her would only reveal and emphasise her crime."