"Certainly," he replied quite frankly. "She is a fair-headed young person who poses as the ward of an English family named Meldrum. A couple of years ago, however, she married secretly an Italian named Biancheri, then a lieutenant of Artillery stationed at Florence, and she and her husband are now generally supposed to be agents employed in the secret service of Italy. This good-looking woman has been a successful spy. Her husband is a black-haired, evil-looking fellow with an ugly scar across his lower jaw." "His description is exact. He was the man who attempted to take my life last night!" exclaimed Chisholm, astonished at this revelation. "He called himself Tonio Rocchi." When Dudley had briefly described his adventure, Cator said: "I knew the woman Mortimer was a guest at Wroxeter, and that was the reason why I wished nobody to know of my visit there. We are acquainted, but at that moment I had no wish to meet her." "Then this woman, her husband, and the Italian Marucci have by some means learnt my secret, and are actually in agreement as regards this scheme of attempted blackmail?" "Most certainly," was Cator's response. "Biancheri, or Rocchi, as he calls himself, and his wife are as smart a pair of adventurers as any on the Continent, and it is well known to us that they have on several occasions levied huge sums in blackmail when diplomatic and family secrets have leaked out." "But the Meldrums!" exclaimed Claudia in astonishment. "Is it possible that they, a most respectable family, can actually be aware of this woman's fraud?" "I think not," was the captain's reply. "Muriel Mortimer, the daughter of a deceased station-master employed on the Great Northern Railway, is of age, and therefore, of course, her own mistress. In England she is still the ward of Sir Henry Meldrum--who had taken her out of charity-- and passes as a single woman, but she secretly married Biancheri while they were wintering in Florence, and her frequent journeys abroad have not been undertaken for the purpose of visiting friends, as she pretends but, in reality, to assist her husband in his ingenious and daring schemes of espionage and blackmail. She is an adventuress of the very worst type." "But how can she have learnt my secret?" demanded the melancholy man upon whom the all-reaching hand of justice had so heavily fallen. "Ah, that is utterly impossible to tell," answered Cator. "All that is certain is that she, together with her husband and confederates, will quickly clear out of England now that you have so determinedly withstood their efforts and defied their threats." ------------------------------------------------------------------------