"I have merely told you the brief facts. The details you would find far more puzzling." "Then to speak frankly, although you have never openly quarrelled with the lieutenant, you fear him?" "That is so. He can denounce me--I mean he can make a terrible charge against me which I am unable to refute," she admitted breathlessly. "And yet you will not allow me to help you! You disagree with my plan to denounce the scoundrel and let him take his well-deserved punishment! I must say I really can't understand you," I declared. "Perhaps not to-day. But some day you will discern the reason why I decline to confess to you the whole truth," was her firm reply. And I looked at her slim tragic figure in silence and in wonder. What was the end to be? Was she aware that her father was the leader of that association of well-dressed thieves, or was she in ignorance of it? That was a question I could not yet decide. I thought of Ella--my own Ella. It was she whom I had determined to save. That was my duty; a duty to perform before all others, and in defiance of all else. She loved me. She had admitted that. Therefore I would leave no stone unturned on her behalf, no matter how it might affect the stubbornly silent girl at my side. I saw that I could not serve them both. Ella was my chief thought. She should, in future, be my only thought. "I much regret all this," I said to Lucie somewhat coldly. "And pardon me for saying so, but I think that if you had spoken frankly this evening much of the trouble in the future would be saved. But as you are determined to say nothing, I am simply compelled to act as I think best in Ella's interests." "Act just as you will, Mr Leaf," was her rather defiant response. "I trust, however, you will do nothing rash nor injudicious--nothing that may injure her, instead of benefit her. As for myself, to hope to assist me is utterly out of the question. The die is cast. Nardini intended that disgrace and death should fall upon me, or he would have surely spoken," and sighing hopelessly she added: "I have only to await the end, and pray that it will not be long in coming. This suspense I cannot bear much longer, looking as I daily do into the open grave which, on the morrow, may be mine. Heaven knows the tortures I endure, the bitter regrets, the mad hatred, the wistful longing for life and happiness, those two things that never now can be mine. Place yourself in my position, and try and imagine that whatever may be your life, there is but one sudden and shameful end--suicide." "You look upon things in far too morbid a light," I declared, not, however, without some sympathy. "There is a bright lining to every cloud' the old adage says. Try and look forward to that." She shook her head despairingly. "No," she answered, with a short bitter laugh. "Proverbs are for the prosperous--not for the condemned."