"An admirable scheme, and I see no reason why it should not succeed. Tell me, in what way can I help you to carry it out?"
"By procuring for me a couple of files and a sufficient length of rope."
"I will drive to Oakbarrow to-morrow and obtain them, after which they shall be conveyed to you either by Mrs. Sprowle or myself."
"How can I ever thank you sufficiently?"
"Your success--and you will not fail, I feel assured--will far more than repay me. But to file through the bars will be a matter of time, will it not?"
"It will; probably a matter of three or four days, but I can't speak positively. I don't think I have mentioned before that now and then Signor Sperani takes it into his head to pay me a stealthy visit in the middle of the night, probably with the view of satisfying himself that I am not engaged in any nefarious attempt to escape."
"I can well believe it. From what I have seen of him he seems to me to abound with underhand ways, and to distrust every one. He is one of those men who regard their own shadow with suspicion. But so far, Mr. Brabazon, I am altogether in the dark (and should you have any reason for wishing me to remain in it, pray don't hesitate a moment to tell me so), and utterly fail to understand how it happens that you, a nephew of Sir Everard Clinton, should have been assaulted as you were in your uncle's grounds, and be here a prisoner under your uncle's roof. I may tell you that I am indebted to Mrs. Sprowle for my knowledge of the relationship between you and Sir Everard. Doubtless it had come to her from her son, but in what way the latter learnt it I have no means of knowing."
"It will afford me very great pleasure, Miss Roylance," replied Burgo, "to explain in the fewest possible words what, doubtless, does seem to you a most inexplicable state of affairs."
He took a turn or two in silence, as if revolving in his mind in what terms he could best begin that which he wanted to say.
Dacia followed him with her eyes--those wonderful blue-gray eyes, which by some lights, when half veiled by their dark lashes, seemed almost black, and could, when she so willed, look as cold and fathomless as a mountain tarn. Just now, however, they shone with the light of eager expectancy, and with something more than Dacia was aware of--something deeper, which sprang from another source than that. To-day its name was sympathy; what it might be six months hence it would not have been safe to prophesy.