in Nice. I did not know until long
after that he had been formally arrested there for his participation
in the chase of Miste that ended in that ill-starred miscreant's
death. Nor did I learn, until months had elapsed, that my good friend
John Turner had also hastened to Nice, taking thither with him a great
Parisian lawyer to defend me in the trial that took place while I lay
ill at Genoa. Sister Renee, moreover, had not laid aside her womanly
guile when she took the veil, for she concealed from me with perfect
success that I was under guard night and day in my bedroom at the
Hotel de Genes. What had I done to earn such true friends or deserve
such faithful care?

The trial passed happily enough, and Alphonse arrived at Genoa ere I
had been there a week. He had delayed little in realising with a
boyish delight one of his recovered drafts for five thousand pounds.
He repaid such loans as I had been able to make him, settled accounts
with Sander, and greatly relieved my mind by seeing him depart. For I
felt in some sort a criminal myself, and the secret, which had by the
merest accident been thrust upon me, discomfited me under the keen eye
of the expert.

The weather was exceedingly hot, and sickness raged unchecked in the
city. A fortnight elapsed, during which Giraud was my faithful
attendant. The doctor who had been called in, the first of his craft
with whom I had had business, a Frenchman and a clever surgeon,
restored me to a certain stage of convalescence, but could not get
beyond it.

"Where do you live," he asked me one day, with a grave face, "when you
are at home?"

"In Suffolk, on the east coast of England."

"Where the air is different from this."

"As different as sunrise from afternoon," I answered, with a sudden
longing for the bluff, keen air of Hopton.

"Are you a good sailor?" he asked.

"I spent half my boyhood on the North Sea."

He walked to the window and stood there in deep thought.

"Then," he said at length, "go home at once by steamer from here, and
stay there. Your own country will do more for you than all the doctors
in Italy."

Chapter XXVIII

The Links

"La plus grande preuve d'abnegation que donne l'amitie,
c'est de vivre a cote de l'amour."

Earlier in this record mention has been made--and, indeed, the
reader's attention called thereto--of certain events which, in the
light of subsequent knowledge, pieced themselves together like links
of a chain i