Page:In the name of a woman (1900).djvu/155

 *plexity and fear on your face;" and she laughed in a hard, sneering tone. "You have been very useful to me, after all, though you do not know it. What you showed me yesterday gave me the clue; and I have been merciful—in a way, very merciful. Death is ever sweetest to a woman when it comes, or seems to, from the hand of one she loves."

"You have a pleasant wit, and your laugh fits it well," I said drily.

"A jibe moves you more quickly than a threat, my friend. And this is a jibe in which you have had unwittingly a big share;" and her bitter tone was in full harmony with the hard, confident glance which she levelled at me. "Did you think I could be merciful even to those I hate?"

"Have you come to do no more than discuss your own qualities?"

"I have not come to be your dupe," she retorted fiercely. "You have discovered my spy, I find, and I congratulate you on the clever stroke with which you have blinded his eyes. But it is too late, Count."

"The man was caught last night in the very act of spying, and narrowly escaped with his life. He confessed you had employed him."

She waved her hand, as though the matter were nothing.

"He had served his turn, let him go. I have no longer need of him; and, of course, you would have killed him had your last night's meeting been anything but a clever ruse. But you scared his poor wits out of him—not a very brilliant or difficult achievement perhaps—and by now he is off to the frontier as fast as his shaky legs will carry him. But that is nothing. Tell me, Count, what would you do if within an hour you were to hear that your Princess had fallen dead?"