“This time to-morrow,” I said, “my yacht will be nearer Ushant than Dieppe.” She looked up at me a little timidly. I thought that I had rarely seen a face at once so pathetic and so beautiful. “Away to the solitudes?” she asked quickly. “Possibly,” I said; “but that is the point about yachting. You set out for nowhere, and if you don’t like it, you come back again.” “And you positively don’t know where you are going?” “I positively don’t know where I am going.” “But I do,” she said. “You are going to follow my father.” I had never been so amazed in my life. To say that I was astonished would be to misrepresent the truth. I knew already that she suspected me; but this challenge—from a mere child—this outspoken defiance, it passed all comprehension. “Why should I follow your father?” I asked her as quickly. “I do not know, Dr. Fabos. But you are following him. You suspect him, and you wish to do us an injury.” “My dear child,” I said, “God forbid that I should do any man an injury. You do not mean what you say. The same cleverness which prompts this tells you also that anything I may be doing is right and proper to do—and should be done. May we not start from that?” I turned about and faced her. We had come almost to the water’s edge by this time. The lazy waves were rolling at our feet—the waves of that sea I purposed to cross in quest of a truth which should astonish the world. The hour was momentous to both our lives. We knew it so to be and did not flinch from it. “Oh,” she said, with tears in her eyes, “if I could only believe you to be my friend.” “Miss Fordibras,” I said, “believe it now because I tell you so. Your friend whatever may befall. Please to call me that.” I think that she was about to confess to me the whole story of her life. I have always thought that it might have been so at that moment. But the words remained unspoken—for a shadow fell upon us as we talked, and, looking up, I perceived the figure of a man so near to us that his outstretched hand could have touched my own. And instantly perceiving it also, she broke away from me and begged me to take her to the Casino. “Miss Aston will be anxious,” she cried, excited upon compulsion. “Please let us go. It must be nine o’clock.” I rejoined that I was quite in ignorance of the fact; but, taking her cue, I led the way from the place and turned toward the Casino. The light of an arc lamp as we went showed me her young face as pale as the moonbeams upon the still sea before us. I understood that the man had been watching her, and that she was afraid of him. Indeed, no artifice could conceal so plain a fact.