here is a pretty kettle of fish right in
one family."

"Madam, are you sure you have made a discovery?"

"Yes, I have other evidences. What I learned yesterday was only
confirmatory."

"I see you are disposed to trust me."

"Yes."

"Let me say for myself that your confidence is not displaced, and if you
have reason to believe that your niece is in love with a criminal, and
if we prove the man to be a criminal, I will aid you in removing the
human toy beyond her reach. I will send him up to the gallows."

"Well, now, you are assuming that he is a murderer."

"I have every reason to believe that he is, and I think the evidence can
be secured to convict him; but why should he seek to marry your niece?"

"He knows she is an heiress--yes, a great heiress. She is heir to
millions, and will have the money in her own right without any restraint
upon her use or misuse of it whatever."

"When?"

"When she becomes of age."

"How old is she now?"

"In about three years she will come into absolute possession of her
fortune."

"And this man, you think, has bewitched her?"

"I do."

"And yet she denied ever having met him."

"I know it, and I will say this in her favor; she is a noble and
truthful girl. She believes that wretch innocent. She thinks I am
unwarrantably prejudiced, and that under the circumstances it is not
wrong to deceive me. She thinks he is a wronged young man. She has been
assailed on a woman's weakest side--her sympathies."

"Have you positive evidence that the young man is the villain you
believe him to be?"

"Not positive evidence, not convicting evidence; that is what I want you
to obtain."

"Is it not possible that your niece is right?"

"Right!" almost screamed Mrs. Frewen.

"Yes."

"Right, how?"

"Is it not possible that the young man has been wronged and is
innocent?"

"No, she is not right. He is guilty, and you must obtain the proofs, and
I will pay you an enormous reward."

"Madam, I will try and earn the reward, and in order to do so you must
tell me what evidence you have of this young man's guilt."

"I have no evidence."

"You have no evidence?"

"No actual evidence."

"On what do you found your suspicions?"

"His general character."

"What is his general character?"

"I don't know positively. All I know is what I have heard and general
rumor."

"One more question. Have you any evidence that he is in America?"

"Here again I have no evidence, but there