He grasped it with trembling fingers. No sooner had his eyes fallen upon it than a horrible change swept over his countenance.
“My God! Yes!” he gasped, his face blanched to the lips. “It was that name. Then you really know my terrible guilt. You—a comparative stranger!”
“Yes,” she answered. “I know everything, and can yet save you, if you will place your trust in me—even though I am little more than a stranger.”
“And if I did—if I allowed you to strive on my behalf? What then?”
She looked straight at him. The deep silence of the night was again broken by the musical chimes high up in the ancient turret.
“Shall I continue to speak frankly?” she asked at last.
“Most certainly. In this affair there can be no concealment between us, Miss Mortimer, for it seems that my future is entirely in your hands.”
“It is,” she answered, in a deep, intense voice. “And in return for my silence and defence of yourself I make one condition.”
“And that is?”
She again placed her soft hand tenderly upon the arm of the nervous, haggard-faced man whom she had just rescued from self-destruction, and looked earnestly into his pallid face.