"Because I had no wish to alarm you unduly, Miss Seymour," I said very quietly. "But Dad may be arrested!" she cried. "Ah! how fatal to associate again with that accursed woman." "She is certainly no friend of yours." "But she makes great pretence of friendship. I have often been her guest." "For the last time, I trust." "Yes. But what can we do? How can I warn Dad?" she asked in deep anxiety. "Ah, Miss Seymour," I said, after a brief silence, "I fear that you think a little too much of your foster-father, and too little of your own self." "Why?" she asked quickly, with some resentment. Again I hesitated. We had wandered upon the pier, but it was as yet early, and few people, save the early-morning exercise men, were about. "Let us sit here a moment," I suggested at last. "It is pleasant in the sunshine. I have something to show you." Without a word she seated herself where I suggested, on a seat near the empty band-stand, and then I drew from my pocket the letter which Guy Nicholson had written to me on the night of his tragic death and handed it to her. I watched her sweet face, so pale and anxious. In an instant she recognised the writing of the hand now dead, and read it through eagerly from end to end. I explained how it had come so tardily into my possession, whereupon she said-- "It is true. He disliked Dad for some inexplicable reason." "Apparently he had become aware of some extraordinary truth. It was that truth which he had intended to explain to me, but, poor fellow, he was prevented from doing so by his sudden death." Sight of that letter had recalled to her visions of the man whom she had loved so fondly, and next instant I hated myself for having acted injudiciously in showing her the curious missive. Ah, how deeply, how devotedly I loved her! and yet I dared not utter one single word of affection. That calm, sweet countenance, with those big, wonderful eyes, was ever before me, sleeping or waking, and yet I knew not from hour to hour that she might not be arrested and placed in a criminal dock, as accomplice of that arch-adventurer Shaw--that man who led such a strange dual existence of respectability and undesirability. "I cannot understand what he discovered regarding the apparition of the hand," she exclaimed at last, still gazing upon the letter in a half-dreamy kind of way. "It seems as though, by some fact accidentally discovered, he arrived at the solution of the mystery," I said. "It was to explain this to me that he intended to come over to Upton End, but was, alas! prevented." "But why didn't he tell me?" she queried. "It surely concerned myself for I had seen it, not in our own house, remember, but in the house of a friend at Scarborough." "And I saw it in an obscure French inn," I said; "and previously I had been warned against it."