“But do not imperil yourself,” she urged. “Do not, I beg of you, Mr Mullet.”
“I shall act with both firmness and discretion, and if we but unmask these blackguards who have tried again to entrap you, we shall have done a service to society at large. Unfortunately,” he added with a sigh, “my own hands are none too clean.”
“You will see my father. The Doctor is upstairs with him,” she urged.
“No—later!” he exclaimed hastily. “At the present moment not a second is to be lost. I must go to them, and see what we can do by firmness. Tell your father of Jim’s visit here, but do not say you have seen me, and say nothing regarding the past—remember, nothing. Promptness of action is now our only safeguard.”
And leaving the girl standing there bewildered, he passed out of the room, and next second she heard the front door closed behind her.
Of his power to avert the natural flow of events she had but little confidence. He was beneath the thumb of Sir Felix Challas, therefore, how could he hope to wrest back the secret which Jim Jannaway had learned?
In any case, the good-looking scoundrel to whom a woman’s honour was of no account, would carry out his threat, and Frank must, ere long, turn his back upon her, as he had done before.
Her heart beat fast, and she placed her hand upon her breast, as if to stay its anxious throbbing.
Mullet, though an adventurer himself, was right. It was her duty to tell her father the truth, and not allow him to continue further in that sense of false security.
Yet at what cost must her statement be made! At cost, alas! of her own honour.