ightful chat with her.

That she was sorely puzzled at her father's rapid journeys to and fro
across Europe without any apparent reason, of the strange assortment
of his friends and the secrecy in which he so often met them, I had
long ago observed.

The truth was that I had fallen deeply in love with the sweet dainty
girl whose father was the most audacious and cunning crook the modern
world had produced. I believed, on account of the small confidence we
had exchanged, that Lola, on her part, did not regard me with actual
disfavor.

"When will your father be back, do you think?" I asked her as she
lounged upon a settee with a big orange silk cushion behind her. She
looked very sweet. She wore a pretty but very simple dance-frock of
flame-colored ninon, in which I had seen her at the Carlton on the
night when I set out to meet the man Tarrant and was so nearly caught.

I had given her a cigarette, and we were smoking together
cosily--Duperre and his wife being somewhere in the great old house. I
think Duperre was, after all, a sportsman, even though he was a
practiced crook, for on that night he and his wife allowed me to be
alone with Lola.

"Do you know a friend of your father, an old man named Tarrant?" I
asked her suddenly.

"Tarrant--Morley Tarrant?" she asked. "Oh! yes. He's such a funny old
fellow. Three years ago he often used to visit us when we lived in
Biarritz, but I haven't seen him since."

"Who is he?"

"He was the manager of the branch of the Credit Foncier. He is
French, though he bears an English name."

"French! But he speaks English!" I remarked.

"Of course. His mother was English. He was once employed by Morgan's
in Paris, I believe, but I haven't seen him lately. Father said one
day at table that the old fellow had overstepped the mark and owing to
some defalcations had gone to prison. I was sorry. What do you know of
him?"

"Nothing," I replied. "I've heard of him."

She looked me very straight in the face from beneath her long dark
lashes.

"Ah! you won't tell me what you know," she said mysteriously.

"Neither will you, Lola!" Then, after a pause, I added: "I want to
know whether he is your father's friend--or his enemy."

"His friend, no doubt."

"Why should your father have as friend a man who robs a bank, eh?" I
asked very earnestly.

"Ah! That I don't know!" replied the girl as she bent towards me
earnestly. "I--I'm always so puzzled. Ever since my dear mother died,