Fortunately for himself he had not proceeded to the length of openly avowing his awful purpose: he was therefore free to deny it, if she had any suspicion, as he was strongly disposed to believe that she had. Besides, what mattered her suspicion? She had no real proof to offer the world. Opposed to her single testimony was the joint testimony of himself and her husband.
He began to breathe freely again. The matter might yet end well as regarded his own safety—the only consideration that troubled him.
Lorelie, knowing the cause of his mortification, sat at ease in her chair, secretly enjoying her triumph.
At last, feigning to be angry, she exclaimed:—
"How silent you are! Are you going to let me depart from this vault without enlightening me as to its mysteries? Come, Ivar, play the part of cicerone. Draw aside the curtain from each alcove, and give me the names and biographies of the coffined dead. I am in an historic genealogic mood."
Ivar, not knowing whether to obey, glanced irresolutely at his father.
"Gratify the curious fool," the earl muttered moodily.
With an ill grace at having to obey the wife whom he hated, and troubled by a secret foreboding that his guilty secret was about to transpire, Ivar approached the alcove nearest the door, and, lifting the velvet drapery, disclosed a deep recess, the walls of which were pierced with niches containing coffins.
"This," he remarked sullenly, touching one, "is the coffin of Lancelot Ravengar, the first earl of Ormsby."
And so he proceeded from one alcove to another, giving the names of the dead peers, his amiability not improved by the caustic remarks made by Lorelie.