“Oh, don’t!” she begged.  “Don’t speak so flippantly of it!  How can you?  And don’t think for one instant. that I doubted your word.  I didn’t.  But it didn’t seem possible that such a thing—­Mr. Brice!” she broke off earnestly.  “You mustn’t —­you can’t—­think that Milo knew anything of this!  I mean about the—­the snakes and all.  He is enough to blame—­he has shamed our hospitality and every trace of gratitude enough—­by letting you be locked in there at all and by consenting to have you marooned on the key.  I’m not trying to excuse him for that.  There’s no excuse.  And without proof I wouldn’t have believed it of him.  But at least you must believe he had no part in—­in the other—­”

“I do believe it,” said Gavin. gently. touched to the heart by her grief and shame.  “At first.  I was certain he had connived at it.  But what you overheard proves he didn’t.”

“Thank you,” she said simply.

This time it was his hand that sought hers.  And, even as she, he was unconscious of the action.

“You mustn’t let this distress you so,” he soothed. noting her effort to fight back the tears.  “It all came out safely enough.  But—­I think I’ve paid to-day for my right to ask such a question—­how does it happen that you and your brother—­you, especially—­can have sunk to such straits that you take orders meekly from a murderer like Rodney Hade, and that you let him dictate what guests you shall or shan’t receive?”

She shivered all over.

“I—­I have no right to tell you,” she murmured.  “It isn’t my secret.  I have no right to say there is any secret.  But there is!  And it is making my life a torture!  If only you knew—­if only there were some one I could turn to for help or even for advice!  But I’m all alone. except for Milo.  And lately he’s changed so!  I—­”

She broke down all at once in her valiant attempt at calmness.  And burying her face in her hands again she burst into a tempest of weeping.  Gavin Brice, a lump in his own throat, drew her to him.  And she clung to his soaked coat lapels hiding her head on his drenched breast.

There was nothing of love or of sex in the action.  She was simply a heartbroken child seeking refuge in the strength of some one older and stronger than she.  Gavin realized it, and he held her to him and comforted her as though she had been his little sister.

Presently the passion of convulsive weeping passed, leaving her broken and exhausted.  Gavin knew the girl’s powers of mental resistance were no longer strong enough to overcome her need for a comforter to whom she could unburden her soul of its miserable perplexities.

She had drawn back from his embrace but she still sat close to him, her hands in his, pathetically eager for his sympathy and aid.  The psychological moment had come and Gavin Brice knew it.  Loathing himself for the role he must play and vowing solemnly to his own heart that she should never be allowed to suffer for any revelation she might make, he said with a gentle insistence, “Tell me.”