"I knew something of her people," answered Vincenti, without looking up. "They belonged to the trading class of Venice, but had noble blood in their veins. The father was a jeweller and something of an artist. The girl's disappearance made a scandal in Venice. She had but just left her convent school. It was not known where the seducer had taken her. A near relative followed them--tracked them to Paris--followed them from Paris to London--in time to see a coffin carried out of the house in Soho Square, and to hear dark hints of poison. He stayed in London for nearly a year; wore out his heart in useless efforts to discover any proof of the crime which was suspected by more than one, most of all by an apothecary who was called in to see the dying girl; tried to get an order for the exhumation of the body, but in vain. He was a foreigner, and poor; Mr. Topsparkle was an Englishman of large fortune. The government scented a Jacobite Jesuit in the Italian, or at any rate pretended to think him dangerous, and he had notice to leave the country. He left, but not before Topsparkle had fled from the blast of scandal. His attempt to become a senator confounded him. Slander had slept until the Brentford election." "Yes, that chimes in with Philter's account," answered Lavendale. "Do you know what became of the girl's father?" Vincenti shrugged his shoulders. "Died, I suppose, of a broken heart. He was too insignificant to make any mark upon history." "Well, I am quite ready to believe Mr. Topsparkle to be a double-dyed scoundrel--and yet I am going to sit at his table and sleep under his roof. That is what good company means nowadays. Nobody asks any searching questions about a host's character. If his wines and his cook are faultless, and his wife is handsome, every one is satisfied: and on this occasion Mr. Topsparkle's company is to be exceptionally distinguished. Swift is to be there, the Irish patriot and ecclesiastical Jack Pudding, who is just now puffed with importance at the success of his queer hook about giants, pigmies, and what not; and there is a talk of Voltaire, the young French wit, who has been twice beaten for his _bon-mots_, and twice a prisoner in the Bastille, and who is in England only because France is too hot to hold him. There is a promise of Bolingbroke, too, and a hint of my queer kinswoman, Lady Mary, who made such a figure the other night at the Prince's ball. We shall doubtless make a strange medley, and I would not be out of the fun for anything in this world, even though in his hot youth Mr. Topsparkle may have played the character of Othello with a phial of poison instead of a bolster. After all, Vincenti, jealousy is a noble passion, and a man may have worse motives for murder." The old man made no answer, and as supper was announced at this moment, the conversation ended.