He shrugged his shoulders. “He could not help himself. He was in this thing also to some extent, but Barosa found out that he had been stealing his wife’s money and I was put to threaten him with exposure if he refused. I have been Barosa’s slave for months, curse him.” There was no mistaking the bitter sincerity of this. “You will do no good with the letter you want. It is more probable that you will find that he fled from the city the moment he knew this thing had failed and took Mademoiselle Dominguez with him. But if he is still there, and still hopes to provoke a revolution, your only means of dealing with him will be through the Contesse Inglesia. Rouse her jealousy, and you may succeed. I would have done it, but I dared not.” I did not let him see my alarm at his suggestion that Barosa had forced Miralda to fly with him, but I determined to get back to Lisbon as fast as the _Stella_ could carry me. I took Sampayo back to the rest, wrote a line:--“We are prisoners in the hands of Mr. Ralph Donnington, who knows everything;” and obtained the signatures of them all to it; and then hurried up on deck. The _Stella_ was just casting off, and with a last handshake with Burroughs, I jumped on board. “How long will it take us to get back to port, captain?” I asked the skipper, who had good news for me. “We’re not much more than thirty-five knots out,” he said. “These fools couldn’t get more than a few knots an hour out of the _Rampallo_ and didn’t even know enough to keep a straight course. They’ve been zigzagging about all night. Never saw such lubbers.” “Well, let her rip. I must be back at the earliest moment. Get all you can out of her.” Sampayo’s words had fired me with impatience. A burning fever of unrest had seized me and I should not know a second’s peace until I had assured myself of Miralda’s safety. The bare thought that she might be in Barosa’s power and that the very act by which I had striven and risked so much to win her, might prove to be the means of losing her, was torture unutterable. The instant we were in the river I had the launch lowered and jumped into her and shot away to the quay. A few minutes now would tell me the best or the worst. CHARIER XXV ILL NEWS Sampayo’s statement had not only roused my fears for Miralda’s safety but had also decided me not to have any further dealings at all with Barosa. As soon as I had satisfied myself that she was not in any danger from him, I would go straight to Volheno and tell him about the abduction plot and how it had been frustrated. I could make a full statement of that without in any way violating the pledge of secrecy I had given to Barosa. That pledge did not include either my previous knowledge that he was an agent of the Pretender, Dom Miguel, or anything I had overheard on the _Rampallo_ and the results.