Reassured by those conciliatory words, the woman speedily recovered her self-control. She rose from her kneeling attitude, brushed the tears from her eyes, adjusted her disordered hair. As long as she escaped with life, she would consent to any bargain.
What a mercy she had not been found out by Contraras, or some equally implacable and fanatical member of the brotherhood! In that case, her shrift would have been very short. This black-browed young man, born of a Spanish father and an English mother, had this much of the English strain in him, that he leaned to the side of mercy.
“How did you find out? How did you suspect?” were her first words when she had recovered herself.
“What first led me to suspect. I cannot quite explain—it was a sort of intuition. When I once suspected, the rest was easy.”
“It was Guy Rossett who gave me away?” she cried, and an angry gleam came into her eyes.
Moreno looked at her a little contemptuously.
“And you have known this man well, and loved him! Are you not a shrewder judge of human nature than to harbour such a suspicion? Why, Rossett is just that dogged type of Englishman who would rather be put to death than betray a confidence.”
Violet looked a little ashamed. “But if not from him, how did you obtain your information?”
“That is my affair. When I have quite assured myself that I can trust you, I may tell you. It suffices that I hold in my possession the photograph of that document. By the way, you lost your head when you gave yourself away like that, because your handwriting is known to several. Why did you not dictate your notes to Rossett and let him take them down? Then you might never have been found out.”
“I know I was a fool,” answered Mrs Hargrave bitterly. “I suppose all criminals make mistakes at times. I was terribly hard up at the time; I was in desperate want of money. I pitched a plausible tale to Guy, which I believe he swallowed at the time.”