wrote a letter to his client, Mr. Raymond, telling him that
Miss Allandale was found, and asking him to meet him at his office at
as early an hour the following morning as possible.

CHAPTER XXVI.

AN EXCITING INTERVIEW AND AN APPALLING DISCOVERY.

We must now transport ourselves to Boston, in order to find out how
Edith's flight was discovered, and what effect it produced in the
Goddards' elegant home on Commonwealth avenue.

Emil Correlli had been seated in the handsome library, reading a
society novel, when his sister went out to make her call, leaving him
as guard over their prisoner above.

He had been much pleased with the report which she brought him from
Edith, namely, that she believed she was yielding, and would make her
appearance at dinner; at the same time he did not allow himself for a
moment to become so absorbed in his book as to forget that he was on
the watch for the slightest movement above stairs.

He and Mrs. Goddard had agreed that it would be wise not to make the
girl a prisoner within her room, lest they antagonize her by so doing.

But while they appeared to leave her free to go out or come in, they
intended to guard her none the less securely, and thus Monsieur
Correlli kept watch and ward below.

He knew that Edith could not leave the house by the front door without
his knowing it, and as he also knew that the back stairway door was
locked on the outside, he had no fear that she would escape that way.

He, had not reckoned, however, upon the fact of an outsider entering
by means of the area door and going upstairs, thus leaving that way
available for Edith; and Giulia Fiorini had accomplished her purpose
so cleverly and so noiselessly that no one save Edith dreamed of her
presence in the house.

The two girls had carried on their conversation in such subdued tones
that not a sound could be heard by any one below, and thus Emil
Correlli was taken entirely by surprise when there came a gentle knock
upon the half-open library door to interrupt his reading.

"Come in," he called out, thinking it might be one of the servants.

But when the door was pushed wider, and a woman entered, bearing a
child in her arms, the astonished man sprang to his feet, an angry
oath leaping to his lips, and every atom of color fading out of his
face.

"Giulia?" he exclaimed, under his breath.

"Papa! papa!" cried the child, clapping his little hands, as he
struggled out of his mother's arms, a