“I have already told you. My poor father also acted under compulsion. Mr Leighton also knows that.”
“And you are aware of the reason?”
She nodded in the affirmative.
“Then you could checkmate the fellow’s plans?”
“Yes, I might,” she answered slowly, “if I only dared.”
“What do you fear?”
“I fear what my father feared,” was her answer.
“And what was that?”
“That he would carry out a certain threat he has many times made to my father, and later to myself. He threatened me on the day I left home—he dared me to breathe a single word.”
Yes, that one-eyed man held power complete and absolute over her, just as he had boasted to Mrs Percival. He also knew the truth concerning the Cardinal’s secret.