"A fiction!" cried Zillah. "Never--never--she could not so deceive me." "Can the writing be forged?" "I don't see how it can," said Zillah, piteously. "I know her writing so well," and she drew the letter from her pocket. "See--it is a very peculiar hand--and then, how could any one speak as she does about those things of hers which she wished me to bring? No--it can not be a forgery." "It is not," said Obed Chute. "It is worse." "Worse?" "Yes, worse. If it had been a forgery she would not have been implicated in this. But now she does stand implicated in this horrible betrayal of you." "Heavens! how terrible! It must be impossible. Oh, Sir! we have lived together and loved one another from childhood. She knows all my heart, as I know hers. How can it be? Perhaps in her confusion she has imagined herself in Naples." "No," said Obed, sternly. "I have told you about the post-marks." "Oh, Sir! perhaps her mind was wandering after the suffering of that sea voyage." "But she never had any voyage," said Obed Chute, grimly. "This letter was written by her somewhere with the intention of making you believe that she was in Naples. It was mailed here. If she had landed in Palermo or any other place you would have had some sign of it. But see--there is not a sign. Nothing but 'Naples' is here, inside and out--nothing but 'Naples;' and she never came to Naples! She wrote this to bring you here." "Oh, my God! how severely you judge her! You will drive me mad by insinuating such frightful suspicions. How is it possible that one whom I know so well and love so dearly could be such a demon as this? It can not be." "Listen, my child," said Obed Chute, tenderly. "Strengthen yourself. You have had much to bear in your young life, but this is easier to bear than that was which you must have suffered that morning when you first woke and found the water in your cabin. Tell me--in that hour when you rushed up on deck and saw that you were betrayed--in that hour--did no thought come to your mind that there was some other than Gualtier who brought this upon you?" Zillah looked at him with a frightened face, and said not a word. "Better to face the worst. Let the truth be known, and face it, whatever it is. Look, now. She wrote this letter which brought you here--this letter--every word of which is a lie; she it was who sent Gualtier to you to bring you here; she it was who recommended to you that miscreant who betrayed you, on whose tracks the police of France and Italy are already set. How do you suppose she will appear in the eyes of the French police? Guilty, or not guilty?" Zillah muttered some inarticulate words, and then suddenly gasped out, "But the hat and the basket found by the fishermen?" "Decoys--common tricks," said Obed Chute, scornfully. "Clumsy enough, but in this case successful." Zillah groaned, and buried her face in her hands. A long silence followed.