"But if I come here to a man's rooms, and find you in his sitting-room in a half-conscious state, trembling and afraid, with every sign of a desperate struggle in your dress and in the room, and therefore I, once your boy-lover, seek an explanation," he said. "True, the affection between us is dead long, long ago, but remember that you and I both have interests in common, and that by uniting we may effect the overthrow of our enemies. If we do not--well, you know the fate that awaits us." "Yes," she answered in a voice that sounded low and distant. "I know, alas! too well--too well!" CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. WHAT LADY MARSHFIELD KNEW. Some days passed. Charles Armytage had not called again at the hotel, having resolved to end the acquaintance. He regretted deeply that he had brought Gemma to London; yet when he pondered over it in the silence of his own rooms in Ebury Street, he told himself that he still loved her, that she was chic, beautiful, and even this mystery surrounding her might one day be elucidated. The action of the authorities in Leghorn puzzled him. Gemma's secret was, without doubt, of a character which would not bear the light of day. Still, as days went on and he heard nothing of her, he began to wonder whether she was at the hotel, or whether she had carried out her intention of returning to Italy. He loved her. This brief parting had increased his affection to such an extent that he thought of her hourly, remembering her sweet, musical voice, her pretty broken English, her happy smiles whenever he was at her side. Her face, as it rose before him in his day-dreams, was not that of an adventuress, but of a sweet, loving woman who existed in mortal terror of some terrible catastrophe; its childlike innocence was not assumed; her blue eyes had the genuine clearness of those of an honest woman. Thoughts such as these filled his mind daily. He passed the hours at the rooms of friends, at the club, at the theatres, anywhere where he could obtain distraction, but in all he saw the same face, with the same calm look of reproach, those same eyes glistening with tears as had been before him in the hall of the Victoria on that well-remembered evening when they parted. At last, one morning, he could bear the suspense no longer. Bitterly reproaching himself for having acted so harshly as to leave her alone in a country where she was strange and did not know the language, he took a cab and drove down to Northumberland Avenue. He inquired at the bureau of the hotel, and was informed that the Signorina Fanetti had left three days ago, and that she had given no address to which letters might be forwarded. He thanked the clerk, turned, and went blindly down the steps into the street, crushed, grief-stricken, the sun of his existence blotted out.