wl--that's why I howl a good deal in secret, I can
tell you. Soon I shall howl so that everybody will hear. So now you
know how it is with me. I am outside her secrets and feel no wish
whatever to learn them, save as they affect me. If she will give me
a few thousand pounds and let me vanish out of her life, I shall be
delighted to do so. I did not marry her for her money; but since
love is dead, I shall like a little of the cash to start me at
Turin. Then she is free as air. It will pay you quite well to try
and arrange the bargain."

Brendon could hardly believe his ears, but the Italian appeared very
much in earnest. He chattered on for some time. Then he looked at
his watch and declared that he must descend.

"The steamer is coming soon," he said. "Now I leave you and I hope
that I have done good. Think how to help me and yourself. What she
now feels to you I cannot tell. Your turn may come. I trust so. I am
not at all jealous. But be warned. This red man--he is no friend to
you or me. You seek him again to-day. So be it. And if you find him,
be careful of your skin. Not that a man can protect his skin against
fate. We meet at supper."

He swung away, singing a canzonet, and quickly vanished, while
Brendon, overwhelmed by this extraordinary conversation, sat for an
hour motionless and deep in thought. He could hardly plough his path
through what appeared a jungle of flagrant falsehood. But where
another man had striven to find underlying purpose in this diatribe
and consider Doria's object in choosing him for a confessor,
Brendon, while swift enough to regard the attack on Jenny as foul
and false, yet did not hesitate to believe that which his own desire
drove him to believe. He sifted the grain from the chaff, doubtfully
guided by his own passion, and saw the Italian's wife free. But he
could not see her false. He scorned the baleful picture that
Giuseppe had painted and guessed that his purpose was to cut the
ground from under Jenny's feet and accuse her of those identical
crimes that he himself had committed. His attitude to Doria was
affirmed, and from that hour he believed, with Peter Ganns, that the
Italian knew the purposes of the unknown and was assisting him to
achieve them. But again his spirit picked and chose. He did not
remember how Ganns also, though in more temperate words than
Doria's, had warned him for the present to put no trust even in
Jenny. He trusted her as he trusted himself; and that als