There was, however, no suspicion except that she had spoken of her father’s “secret,” which she feared that Ella had learned when she overheard her father’s conversation with his friend. That was a curious and unaccountable feature. She knew that her father held some secret that was shared by Gordon-Wright, that gallant ladies’-man who had wormed himself into the confidence of so many English and American women travelling on Continental railways, women whose jewels and valuables had subsequently disappeared.
She, however, held her father in the highest regard and esteem, and that fact in itself was sufficient to convince me that she was after all in ignorance of his true profession.
She might have entertained suspicions of the lieutenant, suspicions that were verified by the denunciation I had just made, but as I looked into her pale dark face I could not bring myself to believe that she knew her father’s true source of income. There was some secret of her fathers, a secret that she knew must be kept at any cost. It was that which she feared Ella might betray, and for that reason she deemed it best that my love should be allowed to become the false lieutenant’s wife.
Thus I argued within myself as I stood there beside her with the blood-red light of the dying day streaming in from across the sea.
I recollected Sammy’s warning; I recollected, too, the strange circumstances of Nardini’s death in Shepherd’s Bush, and of what had been told me by this woman now at my side. She was doomed, she said—and, true enough, there was black despair written in that dark face, now so pale and agitated.
She was as much a mystery as she had been on that first day when we had met—even though through her instrumentality the mystery of my well-beloved’s self-effacement had actually been cleared up.
That she detested the lieutenant had been palpable from the first mention I had made of him. Therefore I argued that she suspected him of playing her father false, even though she might be unaware of their real relationship. Indeed it was not natural for a father of Miller’s stamp to allow his daughter to know of his shameful calling. She had told me that she remained at home with old Marietta—the grey-haired Tuscan woman who had admitted me—while her father travelled hither and thither across Europe. Those unscrupulous “birds of prey,” known to the police as international thieves, migrate in flocks, travelling swiftly from one frontier to another and ever eluding the vigilance of the agents in search of them. The international thief is a veritable artist in crime, the cleverest and most audacious scoundrel of the whole criminal fraternity.
“I quite understand your feelings and all that you must suffer, Mr Leaf,” she said at last in a mechanical voice. “I know how deeply you love Ella, and, after all that has passed, it is not in the least surprising that you will not stand by and see her married to such a man as Gordon-Wright. Yet is it really prudent to act without carefully considering every point? That she is about to become that man’s wife shows that she is in his power—that he possesses some mysterious hold over her. And suppose you denounced him to the police, would he not, on his part, revenge himself upon her?”
“Probably. But I will risk that.”
“Personally I think that Ella will be the greater sufferer from such an injudicious action.”