"The door was shut with the key! Why was that?"
"You mustn't speak to me in this way," said Olga, with troubled remonstrance rather than indignation. "When I visit my friend, we don't always care to be disturbed——-"
"Ha! Your friend—Miss Bonnicastle—was not there! I have seen her in Oxford Street! She said no one was there this morning, but I doubted—I came!"
Whilst speaking, he kept a look turned in the direction of the house from which Olga had come. And of a sudden his eyes lit with fierce emotion.
"See! Something told me! That is your friend!"
Piers Otway had come out. Olga could not have recognised him at this distance, but she knew the Italian's eyes would not be deceived. Instantly she took to flight, along a cross-street leading eastward. Florio kept at her side, and neither spoke until breathlessness stopped her as she entered Fitzroy Square.
"You are safe," said her pursuer, or companion. "He is gone the other way. Ah! you are pale! You are suffering! Why did you run—run—run? There was no need."
His voice had turned soothing, caressing; his eyes melted in compassion as they bent upon her.
"I have given you no right to hunt me like this," said Olga, panting, timid, her look raised for a moment to his.
"I take the right," he laughed musically. "It is the right of the man who loves you."