"I left it on the library table," said O'Brien, his brogue
deepening in his disturbed mood. "It was a nuisance, it was
getting--"

"Ivan," said Valentin, "please go and get the Commandant's
sword from the library." Then, as the servant vanished, "Lord
Galloway says he saw you leaving the garden just before he found
the corpse. What were you doing in the garden?"

The Commandant flung himself recklessly into a chair. "Oh,"
he cried in pure Irish, "admirin' the moon. Communing with
Nature, me bhoy."

A heavy silence sank and endured, and at the end of it came
again that trivial and terrible knocking. Ivan reappeared,
carrying an empty steel scabbard. "This is all I can find," he
said.

"Put it on the table," said Valentin, without looking up.

There was an inhuman silence in the room, like that sea of
inhuman silence round the dock of the condemned murderer. The
Duchess's weak exclamations had long ago died away. Lord
Galloway's swollen hatred was satisfied and even sobered. The
voice that came was quite unexpected.

"I think I can tell you," cried Lady Margaret, in that clear,
quivering voice with which a courageous woman speaks publicly. "I
can tell you what Mr. O'Brien was doing in the garden, since he is
bound to silence. He was asking me to marry him. I refused; I