m prejudiced against this girl. Well, I'm not. I've always acknowledged
that she's handsome and fascinating to a degree, though, as I told you
once before, she's a coquette to her finger-tips. That's one of her
characteristics, that she can't be held responsible for, any more than
she can help the color of her hair, which is natural and not touched up,
like Amy Vereker's, for instance! Besides, Mary loves her; and that's a
sufficient proof, to me, that she is 'O. K.' in one way. You love her,
too; but men are proverbially fools where a handsome woman is
concerned."

"What are you driving at, Jim?" I asked. At any other time I would have
resented his homily, as I had done before, but now I wanted to find out
how much he knew.

"A timely warning, my boy. I suspect, and you know, or I'm very much
mistaken, that Anne Pendennis had some connection with this man who is
murdered. She pretended last night that she had never met him before;
but she had,--there was a secret understanding between them. I saw that,
and so did you; and I saw, too, that her treatment of you was a mere
ruse, though Heaven knows why she employed it! I can't attempt to fathom
her motive. I believe she loves you, as you love her; but that she's not
a free agent. She's not like an ordinary English girl whose antecedents
are known to every one about her. She, and her father, too, are involved
in some mystery, some international political intrigues, I'm pretty
sure, as this unfortunate Cassavetti was. I don't say that she was
responsible for the murder. I don't believe she was, or that she had any
personal hand in it--"

I had listened as if spellbound, but now I breathed more freely.
Whatever his suspicions were, they did not include that she was actually
present when Cassavetti was done to death.

"But she was most certainly cognizant of it, and her departure this
morning was nothing more or less than flight," he continued. "And--I
tell you this for her sake, as well as for your own, Maurice--your
manner just now gave the whole game away to any one who has any
knowledge or suspicion of the facts. Man alive, you profess to love Anne
Pendennis; you do love her; I'll concede that much. Well, do you want to
see her hanged, or condemned to penal servitude for life?"

CHAPTER IX

NOT AT BERLIN

"Hanged, or condemned to penal servitude for life."

There fell a dead silence after Jim Cayley uttered those ominous words.
He waited for me to speak,