"I have got my pistol handy, Alice, in case you scream."
Alice laughed, and as she turned round there was a knock at the door. The waiter announced Monsieur Adams, and an elderly gentleman entered.
"You must be surprised at the intrusion of a stranger at this hour of the evening, Miss Hardy; but my excuse must be that I have for nearly two months been following your footsteps, and I was afraid that if I put off calling upon you until the morning I might find that you had gone."
"Following me for two months!" Alice repeated, in great surprise. "I do not understand, sir."
"Naturally, Miss Hardy, the statement appears a strange one to you; but the fact is I made a promise to deliver a message to you. I found upon reaching England that you had left; I obtained your address at Cairo, and went there only to find you had left a fortnight before my arrival; then I followed you to Naples, and was a week too late. At Rome I missed you by a day, and as I could not learn there, at your hotel, where you were going next, beyond the fact that you had gone North, I have been hunting for you ever since."
"But, sir," Alice said, more and more surprised, "what message could possibly be of sufficient importance for you to undertake so long a journey to deliver it?"
"I did not know how long you might be before you returned to England, Miss Hardy, and as I knew how anxiously the answer to my message would be expected, I preferred to follow you, in order that there might be no more delay than necessary."
Suddenly a thought flashed across Alice Hardy's brain. She advanced a step nearer to her visitor, and exclaimed—
"Do you come from my cousin Frank?"
"You have guessed rightly. I met him abroad; I am not at liberty at present to say where. He rendered me one of the greatest services one man can render to another—he saved my life, and did much more; but upon that it is not now necessary to enter."