“Believe me, it would be for the best. Frank, I have never felt well pleased with Italy’s being at The Lodge. I cannot tell you why, but ever since her coming I have been haunted by a subtle premonition that evil would result from her presence here. There is something not quite frank about her--a veiled something in her eyes that haunts and troubles me. She will bring us sorrow in some shape or form we do not foresee. Let her stay with Lawyer Gardner if she chooses. She is not dependent. Her mother left her a small income that will support her in comfort.” There was a look in his blue-gray eyes she did not like nor understand. “I am surprised at you, mother. The girl is our kinswoman; to Lawyer Gardner she is only the daughter of a woman who employed him to defend her against a charge of murder. She has no claim on him.” “Nor on us,” she ventured feebly. “Mother, you are unjust. She came to us, she claimed our protection in her orphanage, remember. And she is Ronald Vale’s daughter. Had she been a son, this noble inheritance would never have come to me. We have been cold and unsympathetic to her, both of us. By harsh words to-day I drove her from The Lodge. I shall follow and bring her back at once to a kinder home.” CHAPTER IV. IN A SPIDER’S WEB. Mrs. Murray was right in believing that Italy would seek the protection of the lawyer who had been her mother’s trusted friend. A railway-journey of only half an hour took the girl away from the pretty New England hamlet, Winthrop, and brought her into the noise and bustle of busy Boston. She engaged a cab at the station, and drove straight to the lawyer’s office on Tremont Street. It had been late in the afternoon when she held that angry interview with Francis Murray. It was nearly sunset when she paid and dismissed her cab, and, passing across the pavement through the hurrying throngs of people, stepped into the office. A pert office-boy dashed past as she entered--quitting-time, evidently, and he did not mean to be hindered. She found herself quite alone in a gloomy little anteroom. But a door was ajar at one end, and she heard the busy scratching of a clerk’s pen. She crossed and looked in. She saw a handsome office, well furnished, and before a large desk a young man sat alone, scribbling very busily. She rapped softly. “Come in,” said a curt voice, and the young man looked around, showing a dark, strong face, good-looking, but rather sinister in its impatient scowl. But the frown turned into a smile at sight of the beautiful intruder. “I--I wish to see Mr. Gardner,” she said timidly. “Certainly, certainly, miss”--he sprang to his feet with a courteous bow--“I am Craig Severn, his head clerk, and I will hand him your card, please, as our office-boy has gone.”