She looked at me strangely, as though endeavouring to read my innermost thoughts. "No, I hardly think that. Why should he, of all men, attack a woman who was a perfect stranger to him?" "But was Ella a perfect stranger?" I queried. "How do you know that?" "Of course we can't say so. He might have met her somewhere else before," the dark-eyed girl was forced to admit. "Do not the circumstances all point to the fact that she fled, fearing to face him?" I said. "Well, it certainly is a theory--but a very strange one," she answered, her eyes fixed thoughtfully away to the distant horizon. "But what you have told me is so extraordinary. Ella is engaged to be married in a month. To whom? You have not told me that." I was silent for a moment, wondering whether I should tell her. So complete were the confidences now between us that I saw I need conceal nothing from her. We entertained a mutual sympathy for each other--I broken and despairing, and she a woman with the mark of fate upon her countenance. "She is to marry Gordon-Wright," I said in a low, hard voice. "Gordon-Wright!" she gasped, drawing back and staring at me open-mouthed. "Ella to marry that man! Impossible!" "The fellow is compelling her to become his wife. He holds her in his power by some mysterious bond which she fears to break. She is in terror of him. Ella--my own Ella--is that man's victim." "But--but you mustn't allow this, Mr Leaf!" she cried quickly, and from the anxious expression in her countenance I saw that my announcement had struck her a-heap in amazement. "Ella must never marry him!" she added. "But are you sure of this--are you quite sure?" "She had admitted it to me with her own lips." "Then she must be warned--she cannot know." "Know what?" "Know the facts that are known to me. She is in ignorance, or she would never consent to become that man's wife!" "She has been entrapped. She admitted as much." My companion made no answer. Her brows were knit in thought. What I had revealed to her was both unexpected and puzzling. She evidently knew Gordon-Wright's true character, though it was hardly likely she would admit it to me. Yet I wondered, as I had lately very often wondered, whether she were actually in ignorance of her father's true profession. "If she has been entrapped, Mr Leaf," she said slowly, "then she must find a way in which to extricate herself. We must never allow her to become that man's wife." "He is your father's friend, and yet you hold him in little esteem?" I remarked. "What I know is my own affair," was her hard response. "It is sufficient for us to say that Ella is yours, and must be yours."