you shall suffer
for it!"

Delora smiled at me grimly. He seemed in his few dry words to have
revealed something of his stronger and less nervous self.

"You terrify me!" he said. "Yet I think that we must go on pretty well
as we are, even if my niece has been fortunate enough to enlist your
sympathies on her behalf. Never mind who I am, or what my business is
in this country, young man. It is not your affair. You should have
enough to think about yourself in this country of easy extradition. My
niece can look after herself. So can I. We do not need your aid, or
welcome your interference."

"You insinuate," I declared indignantly, "that your niece is one of
your helpers! I do not believe it!"

"Helpers in what?" he asked, with upraised eyebrows.

"God knows!" I exclaimed, a little impatiently. "What you do, or what
you try to do, is not my business. Felicia is. That is why I have
warned you."

"Am I to have the honor, then?" Delora asked, with a curl of his thin
lips,--

"You are," I interrupted, "if you call it an honor, although to tell
you frankly, as things are at present, I am not inclined to go about
begging too many different people's permission. If it were not that my
brother Dicky has just written over from Brazil to ask me to be civil
to you and your niece, you wouldn't have left this place so easily."

"Your brother!" Delora said, looking at me uneasily. "Say that
again."

"Certainly!" I answered. "My brother Dicky, who is now out in Brazil,
and who has written to me about you. You met him there, of course?" I
added. "He stayed with you at--let me see, what is the name of your
place?" I asked suddenly.

"Menita," Delora answered, without hesitation. "Now you mention it, of
course I remember him! If he has written you to be civil to us, you
can do it best by minding your own business. In a fortnight's time I
shall be free to entertain or to be entertained. At present I am on a
secret mission, and I do not wish my work to be interfered with."

I moved toward the door.

"I have said all that I wish to say," I remarked. "If I hear nothing
from you I shall come back to London in fourteen days."

"You will find me with my niece," Delora said, "and we shall be happy
to see you."

I left him there, feeling somehow or other that I had not had the best
of our interview. Yet my position from the first was hopeless. There
was nothing for me to do but to keep my word to Felicia and let things
drift.