she said. "Have you any idea of the nature of this extraordinary influence he seems to have over her?"

"None. I am in entire ignorance."

"When we met that night at Studland I certainly was deceived," she went on. "I believed that she was beside herself with delight at finding you again, and still unmarried--I never dreamed that she was engaged to another--and to Gordon-Wright of all men."

"Why do you say `of all men'?"

"Because--well, because he's the last man a girl of her stamp should marry."

"Then you know more about him than you care to admit, Miss Miller?"

"We need not discuss him," was her brief answer. "It is Ella we have to think of, not of him."

"Yes," I said, "we have to think of her--to extricate her from the horrible fate that threatens her--marriage to a scoundrel." Then turning again to my pretty companion I said, in a voice intended to be more confidential: "Now, Miss Miller, your position and mine are, after all, very curious. Though we have been acquainted so short a time, yet the fact of your having been Ella's most intimate friend has cemented our own friendship to an extraordinary degree. We have exchanged confidences as old friends, and I have told you the secrets of my heart.

Yet you, on your part, have not been exactly open with me. You are still concealing from me certain facts which, if you would but reveal, would, I know, a.s.sist me in releasing Ella from her bondage. Why do you not speak plainly? I have travelled here, across Europe, to beg of you to tell me the truth," I added, looking straight into her pale serious face.

"How can I tell you the truth when I am ignorant of it myself?" she protested.

"What I have told you this evening concerning Ella's engagement to that blackguard has surprised you, and it has also shown you that the mysterious secret of your father's of which you have spoken may be imperilled, eh?"

She nodded. Then, after some hesitation, she said:--"Not only that, but something further. That Gordon-Wright should aspire to Ella's hand is utterly mystifying."

"Why?"

"Well--you recollect what I told you regarding--regarding that man who died in the house where you were living in London," she said, in a low, faltering voice.

"You mean the ex-Minister of Justice, Nardini?"

She nodded an affirmative.

"I remember perfectly all that you told me. He refused to speak the truth concerning you."

"He laughed in my face when I asked him to make a confession that would save me," she said hoa.r.s.ely, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous fire. "He was a coward; he sacrificed me, a woman, because he feared to speak the truth. Ah!" she cried, clenching her hands, "you see me here wearing a mask of calm and tranquillity, but within my heart is a volcano of bitterness, of scorn for that wretched embezzler who carried his secret to the grave."

"I can quite understand it, and fully sympathise with you," I said, in a kindly tone, recollecting all that had pa.s.sed between us after she had discovered the mysterious Italian dead in that upstairs room at Shepherd's Bush. "But I hope you are not still disturbed over what may, after all, be merely an ungrounded fear?"

"Ungrounded!" she cried. "Ah! would to Heaven it were ungrounded. No.

The knowledge that the blow must fall upon me sooner or later--to-day, to-morrow, in six months' time, or in six years--holds me ever breathless in terror. Each morning when I wake I know not whether I shall again return to my bed, or whether my next sleep will be within the grave."

"No, no," I protested, "don't speak like this. It isn't natural." But I saw how desperate she had now become.

"I intend to cheat them out of their revenge," she said, in a low whisper, the red glow of the sundown falling full upon her haggard face.

"They shall never triumph over me in life. With my corpse they may do as they think proper."

"They? Who are they?"

"Shall I tell you?" she cried, her starting eyes fixing themselves upon mine. "That man Gordon-Wright is one of them."

"He is your enemy?" I gasped.

"One of my bitterest. He believes I am in ignorance, but fortunately I discovered his intention. I told Nardini, and yet he refused to speak.

He knew the peril in which I existed, and yet, coward that he was, he only laughed in my face. He fled from Rome. I followed him to England only to discover that, alas! he was dead--that he had preserved his silence."

"It was a blackguardly thing," I declared. "And this fellow, Gordon-Wright, or whatever he calls himself, though your father's friend, is at the same time your worst enemy?"

"That is unfortunately so, even though it may appear strange. To me he is always most charming, indeed no man could be more gallant and polite, but I know what is lurking behind all that pleasant exterior."

"And yet you are opposed to me going to the police and exposing him?" I said in surprise.

"I am opposed to anything that must, of necessity, reflect upon both Ella and myself," was her answer. "Remember the lieutenant knows that you and I are acquainted. I introduced him to you. If you denounced him as a thief he would at once conclude that you and I had conspired to effect his ruin and imprisonment."

"Well--and if he did?"

"If he did, my own ruin would only be hastened," she said. "Ah! Mr Leaf, you have no idea of the strange circ.u.mstances which conspired to place me in the critical position in which I to-day find myself. Though young in years and with an outward appearance of brightness, I have lived a veritable lifetime of woe and despair," she went on, in a voice broken by emotion.

"In those happy days at Enghien I loved--in those sweetest days of all my life I believed that happiness was to be mine always. Alas! it was so short-lived that now, when I recall it, it only seems like some pleasant dream. My poor Manuel died and I was left alone with a heritage of woe that gradually became a greater burden as time went on, and I was drawn into the net that was so cleverly spread for me--because I was young, because I was, I suppose, good-looking, because I was inexperienced in the wickedness of the world. Ah! when I think of it all, when I think how one word from Giovanni Nardini would have liberated me and showed the world that I was what I was, an honest woman, I am seized by a frenzy of hatred against him, as against that man Gordon-Wright--the man who knows the truth and intends to profit by it, even though I sacrifice my own life rather than face their lying denunciation without power to defend myself. Ah! you cannot understand.

You can never understand!" and her eyes glowed with a thirst for revenge upon the dead man who had so unscrupulously thrust her back into that peril so deadly that she was hourly prepared to take her own life without compunction and without regret.

"But all this astounds me," I said, in deep sympathy. "I am your friend, Miss Miller," I went on, taking her slim hand in mine and holding it as I looked her straight in the face. "This man, Gordon-Wright, is, we find, our mutual enemy. Cannot you explain to me the whole circ.u.mstances? Our interests are mutual. Let us unite against this man who holds you, as well as my loved one, in his ba.n.a.l power! Tell me the truth. You have been compromised. How?"

She paused, her hand trembled in mine, and great tears coursed slowly down her white cheeks. She was reflecting whether she dare reveal to me the ghastly truth.

Her thin lips trembled, but at first no word escaped them. Laughter and the sound of gaiety came up from the promenade below.

I stood there in silence in the soft fading light await her confession-- confession surely of one of the strangest truths that has ever been told by the lips of any woman.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

THE VOICE IN THE STREET.

At last she spoke.

But in those moments of reflection her determination had apparently become more fixed than ever.

Either she feared to confess lest she should imperil her father, or else she became seized with a sense of shame that would not allow her to condemn herself.

"No," she said, in a firm voice, "I have already told you sufficient, Mr Leaf. My private affairs cannot in the least interest you."

My heart sank within me, for I had hoped that she would reveal to me the truth. I was fighting in the dark an enemy whose true strength I could not gauge. The slightest ray of light would be of enormous advantage to me, yet she steadily withheld it, even though she lived in hourly danger, knowing not when, by force of circ.u.mstances, she might be driven to the last desperate step.

She was a woman of strong character, to say the least, although so sweet, graceful and altogether charming.

I was disappointed at her blank refusal, and she saw it.

"If it would a.s.sist you to extricate Ella, I would tell you," she a.s.sured me quickly. "But it would not."

"Any fact to the scoundrel's detriment is of interest to me," I declared.

"But you have already said that you yourself are a witness against him,"