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Carey drew near; his face was stern.

“I have something to say to you,” he said, “before we drink, if you have no objection.”

His voice was quiet and very even, but Coningsby looked up with a quick frown.

“Confound you, Carey! What are you pulling a long face about this time of the morning? Better have a drink; it’ll make you feel more sociable.”

He spoke with sharp irritation. The hand that held the spirit-decanter was not over-steady. Carey watched him–coldly critical.

“That portrait over the mantelpiece,” he said; “your wife, I think you told me?”

Coningsby swore a deep oath.

“I may have told you so. I don’t often mention the subject. She is dead.”

“I beg your pardon; I am forced to mention it.” Carey’s tone was deliberate, emotionless, hard. “That lady–the original of that portrait–is still alive, to the best of my belief. At least, she was not lost at sea on the occasion of the wreck of the Denver Castle five years ago.”

“What?” said Coningsby. He turned suddenly white–white to the lips, and set down the decanter he was still holding as if he had been struck powerless. “What?” he said again, with starting eyes upon Carey’s face.

“I think you understood me,” Carey returned coldly. “I have told you because, upon consideration, it seemed to me you ought to know.”

The thing was done and past recall, but deep in his heart there lurked a savage resentment against this man who had forced him to break his silence. He felt no sympathy with him; he only knew disgust.

Coningsby moved suddenly with a frantic oath, and gripped him by the shoulder. The blood was coming back to his face in livid patches; his eyes were terrible.

“Go on!” he said thickly. “Out with it! Tell me all you know!”

He towered over Carey. There was violence in his grip, but Carey did not seem to notice. He faced the giant with absolute composure.

“I can tell you no more,” he said. “I knew she was saved, because I was saved with her. But she left Brittany while I was still too ill to move.”

“You must know more than that!” shouted Coningsby, losing all control of himself, and shaking his informant furiously by the shoulder. “If she was saved, how did she come to be reported missing?”

For a single instant Carey hesitated; then, with steady eyes upon the bloated face above him, he made quiet reply:

“Her name was among the missing by her own contrivance. Doubtless she had her reasons.”

Coningsby’s face suddenly changed: his eyes shone red.

“You helped her!” he snarled, and lifted a clenched fist.

Carey’s maimed hand came quietly into view, and closed upon the man’s wrist.

“It is not my custom,” he coldly said, “to refuse help to a woman.”

“Confound you!” stormed Coningsby. “Where is she now? Where? Where?”

There fell a sudden pause. Carey’s eyes were like steel; his grasp never slackened.

“If I knew,” he said deliberately, at length, “I should not tell you! You are not fit for the society of any good woman.”

The words fell keen as a whip-lash, and as pitiless. Coningsby glared into his face like a goaded bull; his look was murderous. And then by some chance his eyes fell upon the hand that gripped his wrist. He looked at it closely, attentively, for a few seconds, and finally set Carey free.

“You may thank that,” he said more quietly, “for getting you out of the hottest corner you were ever in. I didn’t notice it yesterday, though I remember now that you were wounded. So you parted with half your hand to drag me out of that hell, did you? It was a rank, bad investment on your part.”

He flung away abruptly, and helped himself to some brandy. A considerable pause ensued before he spoke again.

“Egad!” he said then, with a harsh laugh, “it’s a deuced ingenious lie, this of yours. I suppose you and that imp of mischief, Gwen, hatched it up between you? I saw she had got her thinking-cap on yesterday. I am not considered good enough for her lady mother. But, mark you, I’m going to have her for all that! It isn’t good for man to live alone, and I have taken a fancy to Evelyn Emberdale.”