to ask you to warn Dalrymple of a danger," he continued,
as she did not speak. "I knew that fact, but not the reason why his life
was and is threatened. Unless I have mistaken what you said, I
understand it now. It is a much stronger one than I should ever have
guessed. Lord Redin ran away with your cousin, and made it appear that
he had carried off Stefanone's daughter. Stefanone has waited patiently
for nearly a quarter of a century. He has found Dalrymple at last and
means to kill him. He will succeed, unless you can make Dalrymple
understand that the danger is real. I have no evidence on which I could
have the man arrested, and I have no personal influence in Rome. You
have. You would find no difficulty in having Stefanone kept out of the
city. And you can make Dalrymple see the truth, since he has confided in
you. Will you do that? He will not believe me, and you can save him.
Besides, he will not see me. I have tried twice to-day. He has made up
his mind that he will not see me."

"I will do my best," said Francesca, leaning her head back against the
marble rail, and half closing her eyes. "How terrible it all is!"

"Yes. I suppose that is the word," said Griggs, indifferently.
"Sacrilege, suicide, and probably murder to come."

She was shocked by the perfectly emotionless way in which he spoke of
Gloria's death, so much shocked that she drew a short, quick breath
between her teeth as though she had hurt herself. Griggs heard it.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said.

"I thought something hurt you."

"No--nothing."

She was silent again.

"Yes," he continued, in a tone of cold speculation, "I suppose that any
one would call it terrible. At all events, it is curious, as a sequence
of cause and effect, from one tragedy to another."

"Please--please do not speak of it all like that--" Francesca felt
herself growing angry with him.

"How should I speak of it?" he asked. "It is an extraordinary
concatenation of events. I look upon the whole thing as very curious,
especially since you have given me the key to it all."

Francesca was moved to anger, taking the defence of the dead Gloria, as
almost any woman would have done. At the moment Paul Griggs repelled her
even more than Lord Redin. It seemed to her that there was something
dastardly in his indifference.

"Have you no heart?" she asked suddenly.

"No, I am dead," he answered, in his clear, lifeless voice, that might
have been a gh