"Yet there is present another voice still more immutable, still more unerring," Mercia cried in the clear, bell-like tone Rex had first heard when she hailed him at Indian River in the far-away Yukon.
"And that?" His tone was intensely eager. He leaned from his seat.
"Is the voice of the human heart," she answered with eyes agleam. "Have they considered it?"
"I do not know," said Britton, brokenly. Agonizing uncertainty choked him and muffled the beating of his heart.
"Should it not be included in the balancing?" Mercia persisted. She advanced another step and let her husband gaze into her great eyes as he would gaze into some holy sanctum. The two seemed drawn together, to the complete exclusion of Ainsworth and Trascott, the representative judges.
Causing a general start, the telephone bell whirred loudly in the library. Gubbins was in another part of the house. The bell buzzed frantically a second time, telling that the message must be insistent.
"Answer it, Trascott," Britton begged. "People do not speak at such an hour and in such a storm for a mere triviality."
"Certainly–by all means," said the curate, hurrying into the adjoining room.
Ainsworth, feeling his debarment from the physical presence of husband and wife, followed Trascott through the portières. Britton was quite alone with the daughter of the man whose violent end he had unwillingly compassed.
Mercia moved to the side of the table and Rex arose. Her fingers played with the long hunting-knife till they idly unsheathed it. Then her lithe figure straightened back like the return of a bow, and the great blade flashed above her head. The bright eyes were veiled.