"Love him!" she protested, with flashing eyes. "I hate him!" And she went on to explain how she was held powerless in the hands of the scoundrel.
"You have a lover, I understand, mademoiselle?" I remarked presently.
She was silent, but about the corners of her pretty mouth there played a slight smile which told the truth.
"Why not cut yourself adrift from this life of yours?" I urged. "Let me be your friend and assist you against this fellow Banfield."
"How could you assist me? He knows what you are, and would denounce you instantly!"
What she said was certainly a very awkward truth. Banfield was one of the cleverest scoundrels in Europe, an unscrupulous man who, by reason of certain sharp deals, had become possessed of very considerable wealth, his criminal methods being always most carefully concealed. The police knew him to be a swindler, but there was never sufficient evidence to convict.
To obtain Suzette's services I would, I saw, be compelled to propitiate him.
Alone there, beneath the softly murmuring trees, I stretched forth my hand across the table and took her neatly gloved fingers in mine, saying:
"Suzette, what I am you already know. I am a cosmopolitan, perhaps unscrupulous, as a man occupied as I am must needs be. I am an Englishman and, I hope, a patriot. Yet I trust I have always been chivalrous towards a woman. You are, I see, oppressed—held in a bondage that is hateful——"
At my words she burst into tears, holding my hand convulsively in hers.