“Miss Vale, or Italy, if I may call you so--it seems so much more friendly--you cannot guess what a thorn was implanted in my heart by your request. I had loved your father dearly--dearly, and it was but natural I should wish to bring his slayer to justice. Yet--yet--suppose that my suspicions pointed to another friend whom I also loved? Can you fancy a situation more harrowing?” His face was deathly pale, his eyes gleamed wildly, his voice was low and intense. “Tell me,” he said persuasively, “have you not suspected a certain man we both know? Yes, I see it in your eyes.” “No, no, I was wrong--I feel that I was wrong. I must seek elsewhere for the clue,” she cried wildly. “No, you were right, Italy. Your instinct was correct, although now you wish to deny it out of a chivalrous respect for the memory of the dead--yes, the dead, for he whom we both suspect is no longer amenable to the law for his crime. He has passed to his dread account.” Her eyes grew dim, her face ghastly. “Oh, you cannot mean Francis Murray?” she breathed, in a voice of absolute agony. “Alas! that I must answer yes, for it is plain to me that you gave him more regard than was his due. But, Italy, who else was benefited by your father’s death?” “That is no proof of crime,” she cried desperately. She who had come to Winthrop to fasten that guilt upon Francis Murray was now mad to prove him innocent. “True,” answered Percy Seabright sadly, “but suppose I tell you that Francis Murray, then a poor young man, at odds with fate, living far from Winthrop, was at The Lodge secretly the night of your father’s murder--came there secretly, went away secretly, and the next morning found himself heir to the Vale millions--what then?” “If he were alive he could prove his innocence, no matter how dark the cloud of circumstantial evidence!” she cried. “Poor child! you loved him, and your love blinds you. How can I blame you? for I loved him, too, he was so winning. In spite of what I knew I tried to believe him innocent, and I would never, while he lived, have betrayed my knowledge of the hidden crime of which I feared--not believed--he must be guilty. Yet he is dead--betrayal cannot harm him now--and how can I withhold from your desolate, orphaned heart the evidence of your mother’s innocence? But it is yours to do with as you will, to make public or keep secret as you will. Yet my own advice would be--let them rest, those two--your mother and the man you loved--in their quiet graves. By so doing you can shield his memory; and as for her, the jury found her innocent, and public opinion does not matter.” “It does matter. Alas! you do not understand!” she cried out, in bitter anguish; then, desperately: “What did that secret visit count against him? He was poor, you say? Perhaps he came to ask his kinsman for assistance.” “And being refused took a dastardly revenge, eh?” returned Percy Seabright, with a grim pleasantry that made her shudder, it was so heartless.