When I heard Tiel's step at last on the stairs, I confess that my nerves were not at their best.
"We are betrayed!" I exclaimed.
He stared at me very hard.
"What do you mean?" he asked quietly, and I am bound to say this of Tiel, that there is something very reassuring in his calm voice.
I told him hurriedly. He looked at me for a moment, began to smile, and then checked himself.
"I owe you an apology, Belke," he said. "I ought to have explained that that woman is in my pay."
"In your pay?" I cried. "And she has been so all the time?"
He nodded.
"And yet you never told me, but let me hide up in this room like a rat in a hole?"
"The truth is," he replied, "that till I had got to know you pretty well, I was afraid you might be rash—or at least careless, if you knew that woman was one of us."