The old man listened intently, those dark eyes of his shining under the bushy white brows, shining with the reflected light of the fire, shining with a fiercer light from within.
"I have heard this story before," he said.
"And do you believe it? Do you believe there was foul play?"
"Yes, I believe Vyvyan Topsparkle was a murderer as well as a seducer. It is not true that his mistress was a dancing-girl. She was a girl of respectable birth, brought up in a convent—highly gifted, a genius, with the voice and face of an angel."
"Good Heaven, you speak of her with the utmost familiarity! Did you know her?"
There was a pause before the old man answered. He turned over the pages of the book he had been reading when Lavendale entered, and seemed for the moment as if he had forgotten the subject of their conversation.
"Did you know that unhappy girl?" Lavendale asked eagerly.
"I knew something of her people," answered Vincenti, without looking up. "They belonged to the trading class of Venice, but had noble blood in their veins. The father was a jeweller and something of an artist. The girl's disappearance made a scandal in Venice. She had but just left her convent school. It was not known where the seducer had taken her. A near relative followed them—tracked them to Paris—followed them from Paris to London—in time to see a coffin carried out of the house in Soho Square, and to hear dark hints of poison. He stayed in London for nearly a year; wore out his heart in useless efforts to discover any proof of the crime which was suspected by more than one, most of all by an apothecary who was called in to see the dying girl; tried to get an order for the exhumation of the body, but in vain. He was a foreigner, and poor; Mr. Topsparkle was an Englishman of large fortune. The government scented a Jacobite Jesuit in the Italian, or at any rate pretended to think him dangerous, and he had notice to leave the country. He left, but not before Topsparkle had fled from the blast of scandal. His attempt to become a senator confounded him. Slander had slept until the Brentford election."
"Yes, that chimes in with Philter's account," answered Lavendale. "Do you know what became of the girl's father?"
Vincenti shrugged his shoulders.