"Certainly. He's our very best friend. Both Dad and I trust him implicitly," replied the girl. "Indeed, during my father's absence he is left in charge of my affairs." For a moment I remained silent. "He is your friend--eh?" "Certainly. Why do you ask?" "Well, because I feared that he was not your friend," I answered. "Do you happen to know his whereabouts?" "He's abroad somewhere, but where I don't know." "Ah!" I laughed lightly, in pretence of careless irresponsibility. "He has always struck me as a strange figure, ever mysterious and ever evasive. Who and what is he?" "You probably know as much of him, Mr. Holford, as I do," was the girl's answer. "I only know him to be an intimate friend of my father, and the ideal of an English gentleman. Of his profession, or of his past, I know nothing. My father, who knows him intimately, is always silent upon that point." I noted that she spoke in the present tense, as though to preserve the fiction that her father was still alive. Ah! this girl with the innocent eyes and the wonderful hair, the beloved of young Leonard Langton, was an admirable actress, without a doubt. Without the tremble of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle of the mouth, she had actually declared to me that Professor Greer was still alive! "To me, Kirk is a mystery," I declared, my gaze fixed straight into her eyes as I stood near the window where the wintry sunlight from across the sea fell full upon her; "at times I doubt him." "And so does Mr. Langton," she responded. "But I think that the fears of both of you are quite groundless. Mr. Kirk is a little eccentric, that's all." "When did you first know him?" I inquired. "Oh, when I came back from Lausanne, where I had been at school, I found him to be my father's most trusted friend. They used to spend many evenings together in the study, smoking and discussing abstruse points of foreign politics in which I, a woman, have no interest." "And has he always showed friendship towards you, Miss Greer?" I asked. "Oh, yes, and to Leonard also, though of late I fear there has been some little unpleasantness between them." At this I pricked my ears. I recollected that young Langton had, to me, pretended ignorance of the very existence of Kershaw Kirk! What was the meaning of his attitude towards the man whom I had so foolishly allowed to escape, and who had repaid my friendship by inducing my wife to travel upon a fool's errand, and, as I feared, fall into a fatal trap laid open for her? Antonio had covertly threatened me, and I knew instinctively that my well-beloved Mabel was now in direst peril. Ah! that wild fevered life I was now leading was one continuous whirl of dread, of suspicion, and of dark despair. "You have actual knowledge that Mr. Langton has quarrelled with Kirk?" I asked at last.