“How can I tell you the truth when I am ignorant of it myself?” she protested.
“What I have told you this evening concerning Ella’s engagement to that blackguard has surprised you, and it has also shown you that the mysterious secret of your father’s of which you have spoken may be imperilled, eh?”
She nodded. Then, after some hesitation, she said:—“Not only that, but something further. That Gordon-Wright should aspire to Ella’s hand is utterly mystifying.”
“Why?”
“Well—you recollect what I told you regarding—regarding that man who died in the house where you were living in London,” she said, in a low, faltering voice.
“You mean the ex-Minister of Justice, Nardini?”
She nodded an affirmative.
“I remember perfectly all that you told me. He refused to speak the truth concerning you.”
“He laughed in my face when I asked him to make a confession that would save me,” she said hoarsely, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous fire. “He was a coward; he sacrificed me, a woman, because he feared to speak the truth. Ah!” she cried, clenching her hands, “you see me here wearing a mask of calm and tranquillity, but within my heart is a volcano of bitterness, of scorn for that wretched embezzler who carried his secret to the grave.”
“I can quite understand it, and fully sympathise with you,” I said, in a kindly tone, recollecting all that had passed between us after she had discovered the mysterious Italian dead in that upstairs room at Shepherd’s Bush. “But I hope you are not still disturbed over what may, after all, be merely an ungrounded fear?”