"I know whose house this is," continued Haredale violently, "and why you have come. What is he to you? Why do you know him—visit him—shield him? Oh! my God! it only wanted this to complete my misery. I have, now, not one single happy memory to take away with me."
His voice shook upon those last words.
"Mary," he said sadly, and all his rage was turned to pleading—"what does it mean? Tell me. I know there is some simple explanation——"
"You shall hear it, Sir Richard," interrupted a softly musical voice.
He turned as though an adder had bitten him; the blasé composure which is the pride of every British officer had melted in the rays of those blue eyes that for years had been the stars of his worship. It was a very human young man, badly shaken and badly conscious of his display of weakness, who faced the tall figure in the tightly buttoned frock-coat that now stood in the open doorway.
The man who had interrupted him was one to arrest attention anywhere and in any company. With figure and face cast in a severely classic mould, his intense, concentrated gaze conveyed to Haredale a throbbing sense of force, in an uncanny degree.
"Séverac Bablon!" flashed through his mind.
"Himself, Sir Richard."
Haredale, who had not spoken, met the weird, fixed look, but with a consciousness of physical loss—an indefinable sensation, probably mental, of being drawn out of himself. No words came to help him.
"You have acted to-night," continued Séverac Bablon, and Haredale, knowing himself in the presence of the most notorious criminal in Europe, yet listened passively, as a schoolboy to the admonition of his Head, "you have acted to-night unworthily. I had noted you, Sir Richard, as a man whose friendship I had hoped to gain. Knowing your trials, and"—glancing at the girl's pale face—"with what object you suffered them, I had respected you, whilst desiring an opportunity to point out to you the falsity of your position. I had thought that a man who could win such a prize as has fallen to your lot must, essentially, be above all that was petty—all that was mean."