“Any restrictions?”

Bennett hedged.

“Well—­if you please—­Sir Nigel—­that is—­”

“What the devil are they, then?”

“Constable Roberts give orders that I was to stay ’ere with you—­but I can turn me back,” returned Bennett, with flushing countenance.  “Shall I show the lady in?”

“Yes.”

She came.  Her frock was of some clinging gray material that made her look more fairy-like than ever.  A drooping veil of gray gauze fell like a mist before her face, screening from him the anguished mirrors of her eyes.

“Nigel!  My poor, poor Nigel!”

“Little ’Toinette!”

“Oh, Nigel—­it seems impossible—­utterly!  That you should be thought to have killed Dacre.  You of all people!  Poor, peace-loving Nigel!  Something must be done, dearest; something shall be done!  You shall not suffer so, for someone else’s sin—­you shall not!”

He smiled at her wanly, and told her how beautiful she was.  It was useless to explain to her the utter futility of it all.  There was the revolver and there the bullet.  The weapon was his—­of the bullet he could say nothing.  He had only told the truth—­and they had not believed him.

“Yes see, dear,” he said, patiently, “they do not believe me.  They say I killed him, and Borkins—­lying devil that he is—­has told them a story of how the thing was done; sworn, in fact, that he saw it all from the kitchen window, saw Wynne lying in the garden path, dying, after I fired at him.  Of course the thing’s an outrageous lie, but—­they’re acting upon it.”

“Nigel! How dared he?”

“Who?  Borkins?  That kind of a devil dares anything....  How’s your uncle, dear?  He has heard, of course?”

Her face brightened, her eyes were suddenly moist.  She put her hands upon his shoulders and tilted her chin so that she could see his eyes.

“Uncle Gustave told me to tell you that he does not believe a word of it, dearest!” she said, softly.  “And he is going to make investigations himself.  He is so unhappy, so terribly unhappy over it all.  Such a tangled web as it is, such a wicked, wicked plot they have woven about you!  Oh, Nigel dearest—­why did you not tell me that they were detectives, these friends of yours who were coming to visit?  If you had only said—­”

He held her a moment, and then, leaning forward, kissed her gently upon the forehead.

“What then, p’tite?”

“I would have made you send them away—­I would!  I would!” she cried, vehemently.  “They should not have come—­not if I had wired to them myself!  Something told me that day, after you were gone, that a dreadful thing would happen.  I was frightened for you—­frightened!  And I could not tell why!  I kept laughing at myself, trying to tease myself out of it, as though it were simply—­what you call it?—­the ‘blues’.  And now—­this!”

He nodded.