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 “Sir Henry’s falling in love could do no harm to any one except Sir Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister.”

“But why this elaborate deception?”

“Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.”

All my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive, colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible—a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a murderous heart.

“It is he, then, who is our enemy—it is he who dogged us in London?”

“So I read the riddle.”

“And the warning—it must have come from her!”

“Exactly.”