s was in the room, too. He told me that I had been found
wandering about, and he told me that I was in danger of immediate
arrest. When I suggested sending for Richford, he said that Richford had
come to grief, and that the police were after him. Altogether, my dear
child, my situation was not one to be envied."

"I quite understand that," Beatrice said, not without sarcasm.

"My dear, it was dreadful. Richford had come to grief. So far as I knew
to the contrary, my only child was mated to a felon. Think of my mental
agony!"

"I don't think we need dwell on that," Beatrice said with some traces of
scorn in her voice. "You always knew that Stephen Richford was a
scoundrel. He was not the less of a scoundrel because he could give me a
position as the wife of a rich man, and because he could free you from a
great and terrible danger. My mental agony counted for something too."

"I should think it did," Sir Charles said pompously. "I find that you
were married, that all the papers were talking of my strange
disappearance. Strangely enough, I never could get a sight of a daily
newspaper. I don't know why. At any rate, you were married. Richford had
come to grief, and thus was in hourly expectation of arrest. It was at
this point that my friend Carl Sartoris came in. He kept me safe, he
insisted upon giving me L500 for those concessions, which really was a
delicate way of finding me the money to leave the country. Everything
was arranged for my departure when the police came to the house of my
friend Sartoris and took _him_ off also. Directly I found that out, that
something was wrong there, I crept away from the house, and here I am."

Sir Charles held out his hands helplessly. He always expected other
people to do things for him. Beatrice began to see her side of the case.
Richford was dead, and the large sum of money that he had promised Sir
Charles was no longer available. And Beatrice recalled the night of the
dinner party, when her father had taken her to the window, and had shown
her the two men watching silently below. The danger was just as great
as ever; it was just as imperative that Sir Charles should leave the
country.

Out of the whirling emotion in Beatrice's head order began to be
restored. Everybody, so far as the girl knew, believed her father to be
dead. The body had been spirited away for some reason known to Sartoris
and his colleagues; nobody ever expected to see Sir Charles again. If he
could slip