Then impulsively, "But I have not spied on YOU." Yet, the next moment, she bit her lips as if the expression had unwittingly escaped her; and with a reckless shrug of her shoulders she lay back on her pillow.
"It matters not," said Brant coldly.

"You have used this house and those within it to forward your designs.

It is not your fault that you found nothing in the dispatch-box you opened." She stared at him quickly; then shrugged her shoulders again.
"I might have known she was false to me," she said bitterly, "and that you would wheedle her soul away as you have others.

Well, she betrayed me! For what ?" A flush passed over Brant's face.

But with an effort he contained himself.
"It was the flower that betrayed you! The flower whose red dust fell in the box when you opened it on the desk by the window in yonder room--the flower that stood in the window as a signal--the flower I myself removed, and so spoiled the miserable plot that your friends concocted." A look of mingled terror and awe came into her face.
"YOU changed the signal!" she repeated dazedly; then, in a lower voice, "that accounts for it all!" But the next moment she turned again fiercely upon him.