It was only when I mentioned the French banker, Monsieur Suzor, that she started and became visibly perturbed. "I have no knowledge of the gentleman," she declared. Yet had I not seen them together in Kensington Gardens? "I don't know whether he is known to you as Suzor," I said. Then I described him as accurately as I could. But the woman shook her head. For the first time she now lied to me. With my own eyes I had seen the man approach her and the girl, and after they had greeted each other, she had risen and left the girl alone with him. Curiously enough when the pair were alone together they seemed to understand each other. I recollected it all most vividly. To say the least it was strange why, being so frank upon other details, she so strenuously denied all knowledge of the affable Frenchman who had been my fellow-traveller from York almost immediately preceding my strange adventures in the heart of London. My conversation with her had been, to say the least, highly illuminating, and I had learnt several facts of which I had been in ignorance. But this fixed assertion that she knew nothing of the elusive Frenchman aroused my suspicions. What was she hiding from me? I felt that she was concealing some very essential point--one that might well prove the clue to the whole puzzling enigma. And while we spoke the girl's clear contralto rang out, while she herself played the accompaniment. At length I saw that I could obtain no further information from the servant, therefore I begged to be introduced to her young mistress, assuring her of my keen interest in the most puzzling problem. Apparently relieved that I pressed her no further regarding the handsome but insidious Frenchman, the woman at once ushered me into the adjoining room--a small but well-furnished one--where at the grand piano sat the girl whose eyes were fixed, though not sightless as I had believed when in Florence. She turned them suddenly upon my companion, and stopped playing. "Ah! dear Alford!" she exclaimed, "I wondered if you were at home." Then she paused. She apparently had no knowledge of my presence, for she had not turned to me, though I stood straight in her line of gaze. "I thought you had gone out to see Monsieur--to tell him my message." She again paused, and drew her breath. I stood gazing upon her beautiful face, dark, tragic and full of mystery. She sat at the piano, her white fingers inert upon the keys. She wore a simple navy blue frock, cut low in the neck with a touch of cream upon it, and edged with scarlet piping--a dress which at that moment was the mode. Yet her pale, blank countenance was indeed pathetic, a face upon which tragedy was written. I stood for a moment gazing upon her, perplexed, bewildered and breathless in mystery. I spoke. She rose from her seat, and turned to me. Her reply, low and tense, staggered me! CHAPTER THE TWELFTH "RED, GREEN AND GOLD!"