“These words of yours, Miss Pennington, are remarkably strange,” I said. “Surely our position is most curious. You are my friend, and yet you conceal the identity of my enemy.”
She only shrugged her shoulders, without any reply falling from her lips.
“Will you not take my advice and get back to England at once?” she asked very seriously, as she turned to me a few minutes later. “I have suggested this in your own interests.”
“But why should I go in fear of this unknown enemy?” I asked. “What harm have I done? Why should any one be my bitter enemy?”
“Ah, how do I know?” she cried in despair. “We all of us have enemies where we least suspect them. Sometimes the very friend we trust most implicitly reveals himself as our worst antagonist. Truly one should always pause and ponder deeply before making a friend.”
“You are perfectly right,” I remarked. “A fierce enemy is always better than a false friend. Yet I would dearly like to know what I have done to merit antagonism. Where has your father gone?”
“To Brescia, I believe—to meet his friends.”
“Who are they?”
“His business friends. I only know them very slightly; they are interested in mining properties. They meet at intervals. The last time he met them was in Stockholm a month ago.”