She smiled faintly. "What is called a skeleton in the cupboard, you mean--eh? It seems impossible when one comes to consider the kind of man he was. In political matters he was reserved; that was natural. I have heard him laugh often over the efforts of people to draw him. But, in every other respect he seemed as frank and open as the day." "He gave me that impression certainly," assented Wingate. "During my mother's lifetime I don't know that I counted greatly in his life. He was so wrapped up in her that he seemed to have no room for anybody else," went on the girl, in a musing voice. "Then, after her death, and when his first passionate grief died down, he listened to me. I could not hope to fill her place, but I became very necessary to him. He has told me many times that but for me he would have been the most miserable man on earth. I gave him new interests, and weaned him away from his sad thoughts." Wingate leaned forward, and kissed her tenderly upon the brow. "You were born for the _role_ of ministering angel, my darling," he declared. She thanked him with a grateful glance for the pretty compliment. "You ask me if I ever had cause to suspect that there was some hidden mystery in his life. I can only answer, none. His life seemed to me like an open book, that all who ran might read." Wingate was silent for a little time. This was the impression made upon his daughter, an only child, who would have the most intimate opportunity of judging him. It was the impression he had made upon close friends and casual acquaintances alike. And yet who could be sure? A man trained to the law, versed in public affairs, was he likely to wear his heart upon his sleeve? When he spoke, it was in a hesitating voice: "I agree that intuition is a very safe guide in many instances. And I believe with you that your father's life was a blameless one. Still, there is one little thing we must not overlook." "And that little thing?" she questioned in a low voice. "What was the connection between him and the man whom they have identified as Bolinski? Why does a man in his position make an appointment with a person so evidently not of his own world, unless to discuss something of a secret and mysterious nature? Remember where they met, in a little hole-and-corner restaurant in Soho." "It has puzzled me, I admit," replied Sheila. "It is strange, too, that he told me nothing of the appointment, for he used to inform me of his most trivial movements. Thinking over it, as I have over every other incident, I believe it was connected with politics--there are plenty of under-currents in them, as we know. He would not say anything to me about this meeting for fear I might drop an incautious word to some of our friends."