Lady Attwill was upstairs in her bedroom.

It was very large, and luxuriously furnished, with Chippendale chairs and Adams ceiling, while the walls were covered with a paper of white upon which, here and there, tiny apple blossoms of pink and grass-green were indicated.

Despite its size, the room felt close, and Alice Attwill had thrown open all the windows to the summer afternoon.

The cooler air, scented with flowers, poured into the place, but she seemed to notice nothing of it.

She walked up and down the room with her feline grace—for this was natural to her, and no careful pose or cultivated mannerism. Her lovely head was bent a little forward as she walked, and the hands which were clasped behind her slim waist folded and unfolded themselves nervously.

The face itself was very white, the eyes glistened, the lips twitched nervously, and there was about her an atmosphere of terror.

She made it herself, this beautiful woman walking up and down a beautiful room; but fear there was in that quiet place, and it did not come in there from the open windows, but radiated out from a guilty mind and a wildly pulsating heart. Every now and again, as she walked up and down, Alice Attwill moistened her lips with her tongue and glanced at the travelling-clock covered with red leather which stood upon the mantlepiece.

At last she stopped with one thoughtful glance at the clock.

"It'll be all right now," she said to herself. "I am sure they must be beginning to suspect me. Fool that I was! Why, every novel and almost every play has this question of the blotting-book in it. It is such a simple device, and yet in real life how often it does happen! Here am I confronted with the worst crisis in my whole life, simply because I forgot the blotting-book."

Clenching her teeth she quietly left the room, descended the wide Georgian stairs into the hall, and opened the door of the drawing-room.

She peered cautiously into the room, now lit up by clusters of electric lights.

Satisfied that no one was there, she closed the door very quietly, and with silent, cat-like steps walked up to the writing-table.

Again, as her hand fell upon the blotting-book, she looked round in an agony of apprehension. Then, opening it hurriedly, she searched among the leaves with a puzzled brow.

Some of the leaves were heavily blotted and no writing upon them was wholly distinguishable, while others only bore a few well-defined imprints.

Her slender, trembling fingers turned over the leaves in an agony of anxiety, but—either she was too agitated or too inexperienced—she was unable to find what she sought.

Suddenly a thought came to her.

The mirror!—yes, that was the thing. By the aid of the mirror she would be able to identify the sheet she wanted at once. She hurried up to the fireplace.

Above it was an oval mirror framed in wood which had been painted white, and, shaking exceedingly, hardly knowing what she did, she held up the heavy blotter with the paper facing the mirror, and slowly turned over the thick white sheets.

While she was doing this, with a perfectly livid face, she heard the faint sound of an advancing footstep.

It was at the very moment when she thought she had discovered what she wanted, and with twitching fingers was about to tear it out from the book.

The sound of the step came from behind the curtains which hung over the windows leading to the terrace.

Lady Attwill almost bounded back to the writing-table and put down the blotter upon it.

She had hardly done so, and was actually closing the book, when the curtains parted with a soft swish and Collingwood came into the room.

He came in jauntily and easily enough, but there was something in his face which made Alice Attwill give a little startled gasp of alarm and despair.

"Writing letters, Alice?" Collingwood said easily, though there was a chill in his voice which sounded like the note of doom in the miserable woman's ears.

"I have finished writing," she said, stammering—"just finished."

Collingwood came up to her without removing his eyes from hers. He came slowly up, with a steady, persistent stare, magnetic, horrible.

"Just got up from writing, eh? That's lucky!" he said. "I want to have a talk with you, Alice—by the way, let me post your letters."

"Please don't trouble," she faltered.

"No trouble, I assure you," he answered, his voice becoming more cold, dangerous, and menacing than ever. "I assure you it is no trouble, Alice. There can't even be a great weight of letters for me to take to the post—because, you see, Peggy and I were here until about two minutes ago."

There was a revolving chair of green leather in front of the writing-table. Lady Attwill sank into it. She felt as if the whole room, with all its contents, was spinning round her with horrible rapidity. She sank into the chair, unable to stand longer; but, even as she did so, one last despairing gleam of hope prompted her to make an effort to show that she was still unconcerned and sitting down in a natural way.

"I hardly expected to see you here," she said in a rather high, staccato voice, the words coming from her one by one as if each separate word was produced with great difficulty.

"Indeed?" Collingwood asked. "And why not?"

The fact that she was sitting down, that she had the arms of the chair to hold, that she was somewhere, seemed to give Alice Attwill more courage.

In a voice which was still tremulous, but in which an ugly note of temper was beginning to displace the abject indications of fear, she answered him.

She pushed her head a little forward, and her eyes shone with malice.

"I should have thought that the revelations of this afternoon would have——"

Collingwood recognised the change of attitude in a moment.

"Closed these doors to those who planned the trip to Paris—yes?"

"I was not thinking of the trip to Paris," she said.

Collingwood shrugged his shoulders. "Because we were partners in that, of course," he replied.

"Partners!" she cried shrilly. "I knew nothing about it. It was you who gave the orders to the porter and booked the rooms—I don't come in anywhere!"

Collingwood folded his arms and stood with his feet somewhat apart, looking down upon her with a face which, in its contempt and strength, once more drove her into an extremity of fear.

When he spoke again his voice had lost its bitterness and contempt, but it had become harsh and imperative. It was the voice of a bullying counsel in the courts—the voice in which a low man speaks to a servant.

"That is your game, is it?" he said. "You never knew of the trip to Paris?"

The woman was spurred up to answer. She met his voice with one precisely in the same key; it was a voice a succession of unfortunate lady's-maids knew very well.

"Absolutely nothing," she said; "where as you—your guilt, my friend, is clear, transparently clear."

She nodded two or three times to emphasise her assertion, and by this time her composure had returned to her and she was ready for anything.

Collingwood, who had been watching her with the most intense scrutiny, had followed with perfect clearness the changes in her voice and attitude. He now knew where he was. The bluff was over, he was about to play his hand.

More particularly than anything else his mind, intensely alert and active at this supreme moment, noticed that Alice Attwill had wheeled round upon her chair and seemed in a most marked way to be interposing herself between him and the writing-table.

It was as though some precious possession lay there of which she feared she would be robbed.

Feeling certain now of the woman's guilt, he said: "Perhaps you are also going to suggest that I wrote that dastardly letter?"

Lady Attwill sneered. "One of us obviously must have written it," she said, "and your motive—well, it is pretty clear, isn't it?"

"And yours," he said—"and isn't yours clear also?"

"Do you think so?" she asked, with a toss of her head.

He bent forward, gazing at her with an almost deadly look of hate.

"Look here," he said: "don't you hope to marry Admaston if Peggy loses this case?"

She was frightened—obviously very frightened; but she did her best to throw it off.

"My dear Colling," she said in a light and airy manner, "you are so imbued with the remarkable excellence of Sir Robert Fyffe's methods that you are imitating him. But you are doing it so badly, Colling—so extremely badly!"

His face did not change in the slightest. It remained as set and firm as before, absolutely uninfluenced by what she was saying.

"Isn't it true that you hope to marry George Admaston?" he repeated in exactly the same tone.

She lifted her pretty left hand in the air and snapped her fingers in a gesture full of mingled insolence and provocation.

"Why should I satisfy your curiosity?" she said.

Again the man, intent upon one great purpose, absolutely not to be deterred from it or to be influenced in any way by what she was saying, repeated his query.

"How can you explain that letter?" he said, in the insistent tone of a judge. "Who else could have written it except you or me?"

Her eyelids fluttered. She looked up at him quickly. "I don't attempt to explain it," she said; "but I certainly agree with you that one of us must have written it—any fool can see that; but which of us?"

She paused for a moment, and then looked him straightly in the face, defiant and at bay at last.

"But which of us?" she repeated. "That's the point upon which we shall differ, Colling."

"I see," he said. "You mean that you will endeavour to father this cowardly trick upon me?"

Alice Attwill smiled bitterly. "The public will judge," she said. "Ever since that night have I not been in constant attendance here, her devoted and trusted friend?—while you—I thought you had been forbidden the house."

"That's a lie," Collingwood said sharply.

"It is quite unnecessary to become abusive," she went on, her voice gaining confidence for a moment and her manner becoming infinitely more assured. "You are in a very tight corner, and the sooner you recognise the fact the better it will be for you."

"You think you can threaten me?" Collingwood asked quietly.

"I know my cards," she replied, "and what I can do with them. You needn't try to bluff me, Colling, for I know your cards too. Even if I did write that letter—how can you ever prove it? You can assert it, but who will believe you—you who stand convicted of decoying your friend's wife to Paris to attempt her seduction?..."

He winced at that. Even in his present mood of penitence and help, it was a palpable hit.

"With your assistance," he said, and that was all.

She pressed her momentary triumph. "So you will assert," she said.... "But I shall deny it—and there is nothing but your word. It will be suggested to you—by Peggy's counsel, if not by Admaston's—that you wrote the letter which has caused all the bother. You will try to put it on to me——"

He interrupted her quickly. "You will never dare to deny it," he said in a voice of conviction.

"My dear, simple friend," she answered, "why not? I loved George Admaston, as you have said. Do you think I shall sacrifice myself and save you? You can make your mind easy on that score. No, my dear Colling, there is only one way out. To-morrow your counsel will have to say that in the face of the evidence to-day he can contest the case no further. Then you will not go into the witness-box."

"Not go into the witness-box?" he asked.

"Admaston will get his divorce," she went on in a final voice, but one in which a note of conciliation had crept. "You will marry Peggy—I shall marry Admaston—and no one will know about the letters. But if you dare to fight, you will leave the court dishonoured. Peggy will never look at you. You take my advice, Colling, and marry the girl you love, and don't try to interfere with my plans, just when victory is assured."

The note of conciliation in her voice stung every fibre of decency, every sense of honour in him. He raised his eyebrows in extreme contempt and surprise. "You must have a pretty poor opinion of me," he said.

"The highest, my dear Colling," she replied; "but the situation is just a little too big for you."

"We shall see," he answered. "You have been very frank with me. I gather that you don't deny your authorship of that infamous letter."

Her face, and indeed her whole manner, had by now become almost indifferent. "I am not called upon to deny anything that cannot be proved," she said. "You have heard this afternoon that the experts have entirely failed to identify the writing. How did you manage to deceive them, Colling? Still, I suppose it is not very difficult to trick a handwriting expert."

"Don't be too disrespectful to experts yet, my lady. I have a notion that a report I have just received from an American expert may give you food for thought. After all, if you hadn't been afraid of these experts you wouldn't have written that second letter three days ago."

She glared at him. "Well, what does your Yankee say?" she asked.

"He has proved conclusively that I could not have written the letter."

At that she jumped up from her seat, still keeping herself between the writing-table and him. "What do you mean?" she said.

Collingwood dealt his trump card. "I mean," he said, "that since you have finished writing your own letters, you will have no objection to my writing there for a moment."

His voice was so pregnant with meaning, so fraught with decision, that Alice Attwill slunk away from the table, trembling, as Collingwood seated himself in the writing-chair.

"Writing what?" she asked almost in a whisper.

"A confession——" he said.

"A confession?"

"—Which you will sign. I intend before I leave this room to have from you a signed confession that you wrote that letter."

"You are proposing to make a long stay," she said, slowly and venomously.

Collingwood did not answer her at all. He took a sheet of paper and wrote a few sentences upon it in a firm, bold handwriting.

When he had finished he held it up to her. "Will you read it through?" he said.

With the utmost carelessness she bent forward over the writing-table. Her manner was that of one who was reading some casual note.

"I have done so," she said at length.

Collingwood fell into her mood. "Now," he said, "if I had your signature to that, par exemple, there would be an end of Admaston versus Admaston and Collingwood, wouldn't there?"

Alice Attwill smiled. "That is obvious enough," she said.

Collingwood took the paper and opened the blotting-book, while Lady Attwill walked towards the fireplace.

She walked away with the same assumed air of indifference, but, when she heard the heavy leather-and-silver cover fall upon the table, she looked round and watched the man intently.

She saw him blot the confession upon a blank sheet at the beginning of the book, and then with the utmost care and deliberation turn over each separate leaf, scrutinising it like a man who looks at something through a microscope.

Suddenly one page seemed to strike his attention. He smoothed it out, pulled the blotter closer towards him, and took from his pocket photographs of the famous letters in the case.

He put one of the photographs upon a leaf of the blotter and compared them carefully. Then he took a small glass from his pocket and examined the photograph and the page of the blotter with that.

When he had, apparently, satisfied himself, he looked round with a white, stern face to where the defiant but trembling woman was standing by the fireplace.

There was a silence for a moment. It was broken by Lady Attwill saying, "Can I do anything for you?"

"Yes," Collingwood replied; "you can bring me that looking-glass from that small table there."

She looked at him without saying a word.

"You don't seem very eager," he said. "But there is an excellent mirror over the fireplace."

At that, as if hypnotised, she went up to the little table by the piano and took up a small Italian mirror framed in ivory and silver.

She gave it to him. "Well," she asked, "have you solved the mystery?"

"Wait!" he replied. He took the mirror in one hand, propping up the blotter with its back towards him, and looking intently into the glass.

After a moment or two he looked up. "You should be more careful where you blot your letters," he said simply. "You will notice that the impression upon the blotting-paper is not complete—though they obviously tally."

Speechless with terror, she made a sudden snatch at the sheet in the blotter which she had already begun to tear out when his entrance disturbed her.

He caught her by the wrist. "No," he said, very quietly and sternly. "I thought you would do that. I saw you trying to do it when I came in just now. Now, look here—look at the photograph and at the representation of your writing in the mirror. Have you any doubt that the impression upon the blotting-paper is the impression made by the blotting of that letter?"

"And if it is," she said, in one last faint effort, "what does that prove? Why should not you have written it and blotted it?"

"Because, my dear Alice," he replied, "I have not been in this house until this afternoon for six months. Listen! To-day the judge dropped a remark about the importance of finding the paper on which this letter was blotted. You alone knew where it was. Very well, in the sequence of events, Pauline found you here—the first moment the room was empty—with a cock-and-bull story about your bag. A few minutes later I, having heard this from Pauline, find you in the act of destroying this damning evidence—see, it's half torn out already. Come, the game's up."

Aristocrat as she was, something low, vulgar, and malignantly mocking came out upon Lady Attwill's face as Collingwood said this.

"Is it?" she said. "Do you think I am afraid of you and your game of bluff? You have forgotten the important link in your chain. How do you explain the discrepancy in the writing? That writing is not mine."

"Isn't it?" he asked quietly.

"No!" she almost shouted. "A pretty conspiracy!—to damn me and save Peggy Admaston. Why shouldn't Pauline have written it?"

Up to this he had listened to her with some patience. Now his face blazed at her for a moment. He sat down in the writing-chair, pulling it up to the table as he did so. "I'll show you," he said. "Sit down there."

She looked at him defiantly.

"Sit down there," he said again, and she did so. "Now take the pen and write what I dictate," he went on.

He began to dictate, "'Please destroy the other letter....'"

He leant over the table, tapping gently upon it with his knuckles.

"No! the other hand, please," he said.

The woman almost fell over the table.

"With my left hand?" she gasped. "What on earth do you mean? I can't write with my left hand."

"My expert thinks you can," he said sternly. "Come—write; or would you prefer to write to-morrow in court?"

She jumped up, and hysteria mastered her.

"I won't write!" she cried, in a voice which was hardly human. "Neither here nor in court! You can't make me ... the judge can't make me!"

Collingwood punctuated her shrill remarks with gentle taps of his firm hand upon the table. "You shall write to-morrow with all London looking on; they'll know I could not have done it—this book shows that. They'll hear how you tried to tear out the page."

"They won't believe you!" she gasped.

"They'll believe the evidence of Pauline," he went on calmly. "They'll hear from Peggy how you broke your arm and learnt to use your left hand. Every newspaper in England will be full of it. This is not the first time you've written with your left hand; there'll be other specimens somewhere—some other witness will be forthcoming. You have been very clever, but the cleverest of people like you bungle in the end. You've got to do it, Alice!"

Once more she sank down in the chair.

Her face was ghastly. "No!" was all that she could say.

"Believe me," he went on more calmly and more kindly—"believe me, you had better write now! Society may never know—Admaston may be generous. Come! Write! And do it quickly."

Absolutely broken and submissive, Lady Attwill took up the pen in her left hand and began to write to Collingwood's dictation.

"'Please destroy the other letter....'" he began.

She wrote the first word, and then looked up at him with a face which was a white wedge of hate.

"Quickly, please," he said, tapping his foot upon the carpet. "Now, or to-morrow with all London."

The wretched woman bent down once more to her shameful task.

"'... and this,'" he went on, "'and save an old servant who honours the family....'"

Again she looked up at him.

"Quickly!" he said imperatively, rapping his knuckles upon the table. "Quickly!—or——"

Cowed and subdued, she wrote again. "'... from the anger of Mrs. Admaston,'" came the cool, dictating voice.

She finished, and as she did so her head fell upon her arms and she burst into a fit of hysterical sobs—shaking, convulsed, in a terrible downfall of remorse and shame.

Suddenly—as Collingwood held the precious paper in his hand and looked with a certain compassion at his old friend and companion of so many years, whom he had tortured so dreadfully—a high, joyous voice burst into the room.

It was Peggy calling.

The curtains which led to the terrace were pulled aside and she ran into the drawing-room.

Her face was radiant.

"Colling! Colling!" she cried. "George is here!" She hurried up to Collingwood, looking for a moment rather strangely at Alice Attwill.

George Admaston, big, burly, and with all the weariness of the past weeks sponged and smoothed from his face, followed her into the drawing-room.

"Hullo, Colling," he said rather shyly, but with real geniality in his voice.

Collingwood ignored the outstretched hand. "Wait first, please," he said. "Lady Attwill has written you another copy of the letter she wrote three days ago." He handed the confession to Admaston.

There was a dead silence in the room as Admaston scrutinised the confession.

Then he went up to Lady Attwill, crouching over the table as she was, and put his hand not unkindly on her shoulder. "Good God!" he said. "Alice—why did you?"

A lovely tear-stained face looked up into the room.

A broken and unhappy voice sobbed out into the silence, "Let me go; let me go, I say!"

Admaston gently removed his hand. There was a swish of skirts, one deep sob, and then the door closed behind Alice Attwill.

Peggy went up to her husband and clung lovingly to his arm.

She looked at Collingwood. "Colling," she said, "how on earth did you find out?"

Collingwood pointed to the blotter. "Look there," he said.

Peggy and Admaston, still clinging together, went up to the writing-table and stared as if fascinated at the fatal and decisive page.

"Poor Alice!" Collingwood said. "I suppose it is because I have been a bit of a blackguard myself that I can't help feeling sorry for her. Perhaps, Admaston, you will find it in your heart, when the great case is withdrawn to-morrow, to let her down as lightly as possible."

He hesitated for a moment, and then he said in a quiet voice, "I think in her heart she really loved you, don't you know."

Admaston nodded.

"Yes, yes; I see," he said. "I will do what I can."

Collingwood, realising that he had been emotional, pulled himself together with immense aplomb. "It must be a comforting and flattering reflection that, but for the fit of nerves which caused Alice to write that second letter three days ago, there is probably not a judge nor jury in the world which would have refused to make you miserable for life, Admaston."

"You are right, Colling," he said; "but at the moment when no judge nor jury would have doubted her guilt—then, for the first time, I knew in my heart she was innocent."

Collingwood had listened to this, but had also been moving slowly towards the door of the drawing-room.

"But you, Colling——" Peggy said.

Collingwood's hand was upon the door. "Never mind about me," he said. "Peggy, I did a rotten thing because I cared for you, but I've tried to play the game since for the same reason; and if George can really forgive me for just the same reason——"

He stopped, looking with a wan, pathetic, but very tender face at the two who stood there clinging to each other.

Peggy looked up into her husband's face. "George!" she said quietly.

"—I think I'll go on playing it," Collingwood ended.

Admaston did not look at Collingwood, but he looked down at his wife. Then he lifted his head and smiled with a sort of grave kindness at the man by the door.

"I think I can forgive you anything to-day, Colling," he said.

Collingwood half turned the handle. "Good-bye, then, little Butterfly," he said, and there was a dreadful pain in his voice.

Peggy looked up into her husband's face.

What she saw there satisfied her.

She left him and walked shyly towards Collingwood and held out her hand.

He took it, bowed over it as if to kiss it, refrained, and then opened the door.

"Your wings are not really broken—not really," he said in a voice which was absolutely broken.

There was a sound of the soft closing of a door—a little click as it fell into place.

Peggy ran back to her husband and put her hands upon his shoulders.

"My husband!" she said.

He caught her in his arms—in his strong arms.

"Little Peggy!" he answered.

"George!" she said. "I have wanted you so!"

But both Mr. Roderick Collingwood and Lady Alice Attwill dined alone with their thoughts that night.

THE END