It was no doubt chiefly due to the diabolical prompting of Manning that he had begun to confuse me with the original object of his hatred. The more I learned about things the more I became convinced that under the easy manner and smiling face of my next-door neighbour there lurked one of the cleverest and most ruthless criminal brains that was ever destined for a medical museum. His popularity in the district, and the entire absence of suspicion with which everyone seemed to regard him, only served to strengthen my belief. I wondered much what his past history had really been, and whether Inspector Campbell's researches would have any practical result. There had been an air of quiet assurance about that stolid Scotsman which had inspired me with considerable hope, and as the memory of his determined chin and his shrewd grey eyes rose up in my mind, I suddenly realised that the time had come when I should be well advised to take him fully into my confidence. After all, de Roda had committed no crime against the laws of England. If we could get him out of Manning's clutches he might yet be made to realise that instead of seeking to rob him I was only too anxious to lend him a helping hand. Of course he could not be allowed to walk off with the diamonds, much as I sympathised with his view on the subject. Still, if what Christine had told me were correct, the present Brazilian Government would doubtless be prepared to fork out a handsome reward for their recovery, and that would at least provide some compensation for all the shabby tricks that fate had played him. For my part, I wanted nothing in the world except Christine. Some men are so constituted that they are able to fall in love half a dozen times, while with others every emotional capacity seems to store itself up for one supreme experience. It had been so in my own case. Until then the remarkable state of ecstasy, in which at various times I had seen several of my friends engulfed, had always struck me as being a little difficult to account for. I was no longer troubled by this apparent problem. My heart thrilled with a strange, inexpressible happiness, which not even my anxiety for Christine's safety was able to destroy. Everything which had been missing in life seemed suddenly to have come to me, and, almost forgetting the danger in which we still stood, I allowed my fancies to drift out into that golden future where lovers have wandered from the very dawn of time.