So I am to take it that both Digby and yourself are antagonistic towards
Phrida Shand?" I exclaimed, leaning against the round mahogany table and
facing her.

She did not speak for a few seconds, then, springing to her feet,
exclaimed:

"Would you excuse me for a few seconds? I forgot to give an order to my
servant who is just going out."

And she bustled from the room, leaving me alone with my own confused
thoughts.

Ah! The puzzling problem was maddening me. In my investigations I now
found myself in a cul-de-sac from which there seemed no escape. The net,
cleverly woven without a doubt, was slowly closing about my poor darling,
now so pale, and anxious, and trembling.

Had she not already threatened to take her own life at first sign of
suspicion being cast upon her by the police!

Was that not in itself, alas! a sign that her secret was a guilty one?

I knew not what to do, or how to act.

I suppose my hostess had been absent for about five minutes when the door
suddenly re-opened, and she entered.

"When we were interrupted, Mrs. Petre," I said, as she advanced towards
me, "I was asking you a plain question. Please give me a plain reply. You
and Phrida Shand are enemies, are you not?"

"Well, we are not exactly friends," she laughed, "after all that has
occurred. I think I told you that in London."

"I remember all that you told me," I replied. "But I want to know the
true position, if--whether we are friends, or enemies? For myself, it
matters not. I will be your friend with just as great a satisfaction as I
will be your enemy. Now, let us understand each other. I have told you,
I'm a man of business."

The woman, clever and resourceful, smiled sweetly, and in a calm voice
replied:

"Really, Mr. Royle, I don't see why, after all, we should be enemies,
that is, if what you tell me is the positive truth, that you owe my
friend Digby no ill-will."

"I owe no man ill-will until his perfidy is proved," was my reply. "I
merely went to Brussels to try and find him and request an explanation.
He charged me with a mission which I discharged with the best of my
ability, but which, it seems, has only brought upon me a grave
calamity--the loss of the one I love. Hence I am entitled to some
explanation from his own lips!"

"Which I promise you that you shall have in due course. So rest assured
upon that point," she urged. "But that is in the future. We are, however,
discussing the present. By the way--you'l