"Have you travelled from Rome alone?" I inquired. "No. I had a companion," she answered, but did not satisfy me whether it was a male or female. "You live in Rome, perhaps?" I asked, for I saw that she had a cosmopolitan air which was not that of an English-bred woman. "No. I generally live in Leghorn." "Ah! in Tuscany. I know Leghorn quite well--the Brighton of Italy, a very gay place in summer. Pancaldi's at four o'clock in the season is always bright and amusing." "You really know Pancaldi's?" she exclaimed, brightening. "Only fancy! We have so very few English in Leghorn. They prefer Vallombrosa or the Bagni di Lucca. Indeed an Englishman in Leghorn, beyond the shipping people, is quite a rarity." "And this man Massari--it was not his real name?" I said. "No. But I regret that I am not permitted to tell you who he really was. He was a person very well-known in Italy--a person of whom you read frequently in the newspapers. That is all I may tell you." "Well, really, Miss Miller, all this is very mystifying," I said. "Why did he come here?" "Because he thought that he would be able to live in hiding. He feared lest I might follow him." "But you said that he also feared arrest." "That is so. He was compelled to escape. His enemies laid a trap for him, just as he did for my father and myself." "But why did he refuse to give you back your happiness by clearing you of the charge? To me it seems almost incredible that a man should thus treat an innocent woman." "Ah! Mr Leaf, you didn't know him. He was one of the most unscrupulous and hard-hearted men in the whole of Italy. Every _soldo_ he possessed bore upon it the blood and tears of the poor. He lent money at exorbitant interest to the _contadini_, and delighted to ruin them from the sheer love of cruelty and oppression. Those papers there," and she pointed to the securities she had scattered upon the dingy carpet, "and every franc he possessed are accursed." And he had given me the sum of two hundred pounds for accepting the responsibility of his funeral and of the sealed packet. "You mean that he was, by profession, a moneylender?" "Oh, dear no. He lent money merely for the purpose of ruining people. He was heartless and cruel by nature, and if a man committed suicide--as many did because he had ruined them--he would laugh at the poor fellow as a fool, and take the very bread from the mouths of the widow and family." "The brute! A Jew, I suppose?" "No. The people believed him to be one, but he was not. In his methods he was more fiendish than any Hebrew. He did not lend money for profit, but in order to bring misery to others. The one kind, generous action he might have performed towards me, the giving back to me my honour, he refused. To him, it was nothing; to me, everything. It meant my life." And I saw in her eyes a desperate look that deeply impressed me.