Suddenly, with a quick movement, Denia disengaged herself from Dyson's encircling arm. "Ah!" she exclaimed, drawing a deep breath, as she turned and confronted him, "for the moment I had forgotten. Answer me this, and truthfully, as the breath is in your body: Did you, or did you not, just before you went away, on two occasions, take Annabel Glyn for a walk along the Solchester Road?"
There was a perceptible pause before Dyson replied. Then with a laugh which to Fanny in her hiding-place sounded wholly forced and artificial, he said: "Why, my darling, what rubbishing nonsense is this you have got into that pretty head of yours? _I_ take Annabel Glyn for a walk? The idea is preposterous."
"Your answer is no answer. Did you, or did you not, take her?"
"Very well. I will take your word for the truth of what you tell me. It was the dusk of evening and my informant must have mistaken someone else for you. Only, I want you to understand, Dick, that if I know how to love, I know how to hate just as fervently. It is as easy to me to do one as the other. Therefore, _cher ami_, woe be to you if you deceive me. Don't forget--never for one moment forget, that your secret is my property--that I hold your life in the hollow of my hand!"
For a moment or two longer her emotion seemed almost to choke her; then suddenly turning, she placed her hand within his arm. "Come," she said, and her voice was again as soft as that of a cooing dove, just one turn more and then you must positively go. "Who can say what prying eyes may not be secretly watching us?"
With that they passed out of earshot, and the same instant Fanny turned and sped softly away through the shrubbery at the back of the well-house. As she passed the conservatory she saw that the door was ajar, but she did not pause till she reached her own room. Then she stood with her hands pressed to her head, amazed--confounded--not so much by her own blindness as by the revelation of Denia's unparalleled cunning and duplicity. It almost took her breath away to think of it. How she had hoodwinked them all!--she, with her doll's eyes and candid-seeming brow, and her smile that was almost infantine in its sweetness. What puppets they had been in her fingers--Mr. Melray, Phil, and herself!