She was determined to have her answer, and that openly.
In darkness and secrecy the deed had been wrought: amid brilliant light and before a crowd of hearers the truth should be proclaimed. Like some struggling victim in the torture-chamber, who, doggedly speechless, is forced onward to the rack that will soon wring the confession from his reluctant lips, so the earl, in dumb agony, felt himself drawn onward to tell the dread secret of his life.
The jewelled hilt of the stiletto protruding from the skull exercized a fascination over him: he could not take his gaze from it: like a gleaming eye it seemed to be commanding him to admit his guilt.
Idris, attentive to every variation in the face of the earl, saw that he was sinking into a cataleptic state. Unable to obtain the required confession in any other way Lorelie had resorted to her knowledge of hypnotism, and had found the earl powerless to resist her mesmeric influence.
"Speak! Whose skull is this?" she asked once more.
"My brother's."
The earl spoke like an automaton, in a tone, cold, mechanical, passionless—a tone he maintained throughout the whole of his subsequent answering.
A wave of surprise passed over the audience. Till that moment it had not been known that Urien Ravengar, the preceding earl, had had more than one son.
"When did your brother die?"
"Twenty-one years ago."