CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. FROM A WOMAN'S LIPS. The handsome, dark-haired girl had placed her hand upon my arm, and stood with her eyes anxiously fixed upon mine. "Do you really mean this?" she asked, in a hoarse, strained voice. "I have told you quite frankly my intention," was my answer. "I know that scoundrel--in fact I am myself a witness against Him." "In what manner?" she asked naively. "That man is one of a clever gang of thieves who for years have eluded the police," I replied. "In England he lives in security in a Cornish village under the name of Gordon-Wright, while here, on the Continent, he frequents the best hotels, and with his friends makes enormous hauls of money and jewels." "A thief!" she exclaimed, with amazement that I thought well feigned. "And can you really actually prove this?" "The coward robbed a friend of mine who, being ill, could not take care of himself," I said. "I have only to say one single word to the nearest police office and they will arrest him wherever he may be. And now, to speak quite openly, I tell you that I mean to do this." "You will have him arrested?" "Yes, and by so doing I shall at least save Ella. The thing is really very simple after all. I intend to defy him. Ella is mine and he shall not snatch her from me." "Then you know him--I mean you knew him before I introduced you?" she asked, after a brief pause. "I know him rather too well," I answered meaningly. "It is curious, Miss Miller," I added, "that your father should be the intimate friend of a man of such bad reputation. He surely cannot be aware of his true character." She knit her brows again, for she saw that she was treading on dangerous ground. She was not an adventuress herself but a sweet and charming girl, yet I had no doubt but that she participated in her father's many guilty secrets. Perhaps it was her easy-going cosmopolitan air that suggested this, or perhaps it may have been owing to her earnest desire that Ella should marry that man, and thus be prevented from betraying what she had learnt on that fateful night at Studland. "Dear old dad always makes friends far too easily," was her evasive reply, the response of a clever woman. "I've told him so lots of times. Travelling so much as he does, half over Europe, he is for ever making new acquaintances, and queer ones they are, too, sometimes, I can tell you. We've had visitors here, in this flat, of all grades, from broken-down English jockeys and music hall artists trying to borrow their fare third-class back to England, to lords, earls, Stock Exchange men and company promoters whose names are as household words in the halfpenny papers. Yet I suppose it's so with many men. They are big-hearted, make friends easily, and everybody takes advantage of their hospitality. It is so with my father. All his friends impose on him without exception."