“Suppose he’s trying to get ahead of you – trying to find the gold without your assistance?”

“He wouldn’t dare!” she gasped.

Mr Gilder nodded very slowly, very deliberately.

“He has already tried,” he said. “Two nights ago I was watching him, suspecting his plan. He went at three o’clock in the morning to the ruins of Chelford Abbey, and he took with him a crowbar–”

Whilst he was speaking, the red in her face deepened and the wide-opened eyes grew brighter.

“The hound!” she breathed. “The twisting, double-faced monkey!”

It was not a ladylike expression, but for the moment she was superior to sham.

“The dirty, thieving, twisting sneak! To the abbey, with a crowbar? I’ll take my oath on a Bible that I never breathed a word of where it was hid – I mean hidden. Let him go with his crowbar – ha, ha!” She laughed shrilly, but gave no other evidence of supreme amusement. “I’ll crowbar him! Let him search and scrape and dig and see what he can find.”

He tried to soothe her, but for the moment her soul was breaking in tumultuous waves upon the muddy flats of Arthur’s duplicity.

“He has deceived me! I don’t mean in an unladylike way – I mean – you know what I mean, Mr Gilder? I trusted that man. I gave him all my heart.” The sob came naturally, but it was largely due to intensified annoyance. “I gave him all that a woman could give a man – information I mean, Mr Gilder – I don’t want you to get any wrong ideas about me, because I’ve always behaved like a lady, and nobody can point their fingers of scorn at me.”

She grew calm after a while.

“Who can you trust?” she asked bitterly. “Who – can – you – trust?”

“You can trust me.” Fabrian Gilder’s voice was very gentle, almost pleading.

He was rather a good-looking man, she observed; his grey hair gave him distinction.

“You wouldn’t want a legal document from me.”

“Yes, I would,” she said obstinately. “I don’t trust men.”

“You shall have any document you wish. I will even go as far as compromising myself hopelessly.”

She coughed.

“I don’t think I should go quite as far as that,” she said, misunderstanding him.

“I mean that I would take the risk of detection, without safeguarding myself as Arthur Gine has done.”

She dabbed her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief.

“Of course, Mr Gilder, I don’t know you very well, but I’m not going to say that I don’t like you. I’ve always said to Agatha – my Tuesday friend, as I call her – ‘Mr Gilder’s a perfect gentleman.’ In fact, I’m – Mr Gilder, what is your Christian name?”

“Fabrian,” he said.

She lingered tenderly over the word and smiled, a wistful sideways smile.