"I confess I had no suspicions that Mr Kemball was in Bath," declared her father, with a smile. Then turning to me, he added: "I feared to communicate with you, lest Tramu might be watching your correspondence. He is one of the few really intelligent police officials that France possesses." "He is evidently extremely anxious to make your acquaintance," I laughed. "I believe so. And I am equally anxious to avoid him. While I remain here, however, I am quite unsuspected and safe. It is really surprising," he added, "what an air of respectability a little profuse charity gives to one in a country district. Become a churchwarden, get appointed a justice of the peace, sit upon the board of guardians, give a few teas and school-treats, and subscribe to the church funds, and though you may be an entire outsider you can do no wrong in the eyes of the country folk. I know it from experience." "Ah! you are a little too reckless sometimes, Dad," exclaimed the girl, shaking her head. "Remember that when you've not taken Surridge's advice, you've run into danger." But the man with the small, shrewd eyes smiled at the girl's words of wisdom. Again and again there recurred to me those strange expressions in the letter of poor Guy. Ah! if he only had lived! And yet if he were still alive my love for the girl before me must have been a hopeless one. Only on those last weeks had she abandoned her deep! black. That she often sat for hours plunged in bitter memories I knew full well. Would she ever sufficiently forget to allow me to take his place in her young heart? Knowing her nature, her honest, true, open-hearted disposition, I sometimes experienced a strange heart-sinking that, after all, she could never reciprocate my love. Yet now, as the weeks had gone on, my affection had become stronger and stronger, until I was seized by a passion akin to madness. I loved her with my soul, as truly and as well as ever man has loved a woman through all ages. Yet, for what reason I cannot even now determine, I felt a strange foreboding that evil was pursuing her. I experienced exactly the same feeling that Guy Nicholson had felt when he penned that letter to me, the delivery of which was, alas! so long delayed. Presently, when Asta had risen again and left the room, Shaw turned to me and said-- "Poor girl, Guy's death was a great blow to her, but she is gradually getting over it--don't you think so? I should never have risked going to the Continent had it not been for her sake--in order to give her a change. But in these last few weeks we've had sufficient change, in all conscience. She's always so cool and level-headed that I feel lost without her, Kemball." His words were surely not those of an enemy. No, more than ever was I convinced of his devotion to the girl who, as a tiny child, he had adopted as his own daughter. Mention of Nicholson, however, afforded me opportunity to tell him how tardily I had received a letter from the dead man.