“But the position of the parties—a confessed morphiomaniac—his, as I understand you, hardly-veiled threats! You had only to go to the police.”
She regarded me with grey tolerance.
“There is such a thing as scandal; there is such a thing as despotic influence, even amongst this supposed discredited noblesse. The Marquis, for all his domestic parsimony, is a man of immense political power. And he is rich; he can command what instruments he pleases. Besides, you are not to suppose that he habitually reveals himself in his conduct. That is not at all the way with such aliénés. He can be suavity itself—most convincingly, most alluringly. You have much to learn, Felix Dane.”
“I have, indeed. This is not Paris, but mediæval Rome. Has the young lady no relatives, great or small, to whom to appeal?”
“Not one, who is not subject in some way to his tyranny or dislike. He is a strange unnatural character, and greatly feared.”
“Well, I think, if you are not dreaming, that I must be. My step-sister Marion, from Neverston Vicarage, and implicated in a transpontine mystery of abduction and murder! The young Countess is here, you say—in pledge to me until redeemed by you. And what do you propose doing?”
“I propose going back to the Hôtel Beaurepaire.”
“Going back? To invite the reprisals of that monster?”
“I have no fear of him for myself—if for no other reason than that in me lives the only clue to this poor unhappy child’s whereabouts.”
Marion had courage. I had never doubted that; but this manifestation of it, whatever ludicrous fancy it might be based on, surprised while it interested me. She had never been wont to sentimental attachments. But I had thought of late that in many ways she was an altered woman, broader-minded, more humanly worldly than of old.