“I will tell you,” I answered, readily. “On Tuesday morning my father received a letter, and whatever its contents were, they summoned him to London. He was to have returned yesterday. He did not come, and he sent no message. All to-day we have had no word from him. The last train from London to-night is in, and he has not come. We do not know where he is, or what has become of him. There are the services to-morrow, and no one to take them. He must be ill, or in trouble of some sort, or he would have returned, that is certain. It has made us terribly anxious.” “I am very sorry to hear this, Miss Ffolliot,” he said. “If I could help you I would be glad, but I am afraid I do not quite see--exactly--” I raised my eyes to his and looked him in the face. The words seemed to die away upon his lips. He was not actor enough for his part. “I will tell you why I came to you for help, Mr. Deville,” I exclaimed. “The handwriting upon the letter which you dropped was the same handwriting which summoned my father to London.” Then, for the first time, some glimmering of the mystery in which these persons and my father were alike concerned dawned upon me. The man and the women looked at one another; Bruce Deville walked over to the window without answering or addressing me. I had, indeed, asked no direct question. Yet they knew what I wanted. It was the whole truth which I desired. I stamped my foot upon the floor. Did they know what my sufferings were, those two persons, with their pale, puzzled faces and cold words? I felt myself growing angry. “Answer me!” I cried. “Who wrote you that letter?” Still neither the man nor the woman spoke. Their silence maddened me. I forgot my promise to the man at Naselton Hall. I forgot everything except my desire to sting them out of that merciless, unsympathetic silence. So I cried out to them-- “I will tell you who wrote it; it was a man from South America, and his name is Berdenstein. He is at Naselton Hall. I will go to him. Perhaps he will tell me what you will not.” The man stepped forward with outstretched hand. His face was dark with passionate anger, almost I thought he would have struck me. But the woman’s was pale as death, and a drop of red blood marked the place where her teeth met her under lip. Then I saw that the man had known, but the woman had not. “If you know so much,” he said, brutally, “you had better go to him and discover the rest. You will find him very sympathetic. Without a doubt he will help you!” “No! No!” The woman’s negative rang out with a sudden sharp and crisp distinctness. She rose and came over to my side. She laid her hands softly upon my shoulders. Her face amazed me, it was so full of sympathy, and yet so sorrowful. She, too, had received a blow.