u are warning me?" I exclaimed
in hesitation. "You fear him, evidently, and you urge me to leave here
and return to England. Why should I not remain here in defiance?"

"In some cases defiance is distinctly injudicious," she remarked. "It
is so in this. Your only safety is in escape. I can tell you no more."

"These words of yours, Miss Pennington, are remarkably strange," I
said. "Surely our position is most curious. You are my friend, and yet
you conceal the identity of my enemy."

She only shrugged her shoulders, without any reply falling from her
lips.

"Will you not take my advice and get back to England at once?" she
asked very seriously, as she turned to me a few minutes later. "I have
suggested this in your own interests."

"But why should I go in fear of this unknown enemy?" I asked. "What
harm have I done? Why should any one be my bitter enemy?"

"Ah, how do I know?" she cried in despair. "We all of us have enemies
where we least suspect them. Sometimes the very friend we trust most
implicitly reveals himself as our worst antagonist. Truly one should
always pause and ponder deeply before making a friend."

"You are perfectly right," I remarked. "A fierce enemy is always
better than a false friend. Yet I would dearly like to know what I
have done to merit antagonism. Where has your father gone?"

"To Brescia, I believe--to meet his friends."

"Who are they?"

"His business friends. I only know them very slightly; they are
interested in mining properties. They meet at intervals. The last time
he met them was in Stockholm a month ago."

This struck me as curious. Why should he meet his business friends so
clandestinely--why should they come at night in a car to cross-roads?

But I told her nothing of what I had witnessed. I decided to keep my
knowledge to myself.

"The boat leaves at two o'clock," she said, after a pause, her hand
upon her breast as though to stay the wild beating of her heart. "Will
you not take my advice and leave by that? Go to Milan, and then
straight on to England," she urged in deep earnestness, her big,
wide-open eyes fixed earnestly upon mine.

"No, Miss Pennington," I replied promptly; "the fact is, I do not feel
disposed to leave here just at present. I prefer to remain--and to
take the risk, whatever it may be."

"But why?" she cried, for we were standing at the end of the terrace,
and out of hearing.

"Because you are in need of a friend--because you have admitted