rgreave, you are the same," she declared
petulantly.

"I cannot, I regret, disclose to you facts of which I am ignorant," I
protested. "I am just as much in the dark concerning the actual object
of our mission here as you are."

"Do you think Madame knows anything of your mission here?" asked the
girl.

"I don't expect so. Your father is a very close and secretive man
concerning his own business."

"Ah! a mysterious business!" she exclaimed in a strange meaning voice.
"Sometimes, Mr. Hargreave--sometimes I feel that it is not altogether
an honest business."

"Many brilliant pieces of business savor of dishonesty," I remarked.
"The successful business man cannot always, in these days of
double-dealing chicanery and cut prices, act squarely, otherwise he is
quickly left behind by his more shrewd competitors."

And then I thought it wise to turn the subject of our conversation.

Salerno is only thirty miles from Naples, therefore I often traveled
to the latter place--indeed, almost daily.

In Italian they have an old saying, "_A chi veglia tutto si rivela_"
("To him who remains watchful everything becomes revealed"). That had
long been my motto. With Lola and Madame Duperre I was in Italy in
order to learn what I could concerning the woman whom Fra Pacifico had
so bitterly denounced.

One warm afternoon when, without being seen, I was watching the
Marchesa's pretty daughter Flavia who had strolled into the town, I
saw her meet, close to the Cafe Ferrari, that tall, black-bearded,
middle-aged banker Pietro Zuccari, whom I had seen at their palazzo.
They walked as far as the Piazza San Ferdinando and entered the
Gambrinus, where they sat at a little table eating ices, while he
talked to her very confidentially. As I idled outside in a shabby suit
and battered straw hat which I had bought, I saw this great Italian
banker gesticulating and whispering into her ear.

The girl's attitude was that of a person absorbing all his arguments
in order to repeat them, for she nodded slowly from time to time,
though she uttered but few words; indeed, only now and then did she
ask any question.

I could, of course, hear nothing. But what I was able to observe
aroused my curiosity, for the meeting between the girl and the
middle-aged banker was palpably a clandestine one.

On emerging, they parted, he walking in the direction of the railway
station, while the girl strolled homeward. Was she carrying a message
to her mother