For some moments I was silent. The door opened behind us, and Sammy, who had returned, stood upon the threshold, surprised that I had visitors. I motioned to him to enter and close the door. Then I said:-- "Mr Sampson is my friend; we can speak before him, Miss Miller. Were you entirely unaware of your father's real profession?" "I swear that I was. I had no idea of it until three days ago, when I discovered proof positive that he was in association with certain men who were expert thieves." "Then your association with the fugitive Nardini was in no way connected with your father's dishonesty?" I asked. "You have just said that Gordon-Wright's death has set you at liberty. Will you not now tell us the truth, so that all may be open and straightforward?" She hesitated, and I saw that she naturally felt disinclined to condemn the man of whom she had all her life been so fond, and in whom she had so implicitly trusted. Many fathers act mysteriously in the eyes of their children. Mr Miller had ever been a mystery, and yet with filial affection she had never once suspected him of leading a double life. "Yes," urged Ella, "tell us all. Half an hour ago you told me that you are at last free--that the man who held me so entirely in his power also held you in his unscrupulous hands." Sammy said nothing. He had already condemned Lucie, and in his eyes she was but a mere adventuress. "If I confess, Mr Leaf, I wonder if you and Ella will forgive me?" she exclaimed at last, in a hard, strained voice. "I assure you that I, like yourselves, have been merely a victim of circumstances." "Explain the truth," I said, in a voice of sympathy, for I saw by the shame upon her countenance that she had been an innocent victim. "Well," she said, "it happened like this. We had been living at Enghien, outside Paris. The man I loved, Manuel Carrera, a young Chilian, had committed suicide because thieves had stolen a large sum of money of which he had accepted the responsibility, and I was broken-hearted and grief-stricken. We had left Paris and were in Brussels when the news reached me; therefore, when my father proposed that we should go on to Salsomaggiore, I welcomed the change. I never wished to place foot in Paris again. We had kept on the little apartment we had in Rome, where we usually spent the winter, but before going there we decided to take the cure. About a week after our arrival at the hotel at Salsomaggiore there came one of Italy's best known statesmen, the Onorevole Giovanni Nardini, Minister of Justice, accompanied by his private secretary, a doctor named Gavazzi. My father--whom I have since discovered had obtained private information of Nardini's shady financial transactions--at once cultivated his acquaintance, as well as that of Gavazzi, and while we were taking the cure we became quite intimate friends.