a soul within hearing! Now she
would speak her mind to Henri--her dear Henri--and tell him all.

"You want to know, dear one, why my existence has been surrounded with
so many mysterious precautions of late years! You wish to know why the
baron is so determined that my real identity should remain hidden! You
are right; for I have long asked myself the same question. When I
spoke to the baron about this for the first time--it was only a few
weeks ago, and told him that I wished to appear as what I really am,
Therese Auvernois, my father by adoption--I may call him that, seeing
how good, how kind he has been to me--began by telling me it was
impossible--that the most terrible misfortunes would result from such
a revelation.... I insisted. I wanted to know what these dreadful
misfortunes would be, and why they would follow as a matter of course,
were it made known that I am Therese Auvernois. Thereupon the baron
told me astonishing things.

"According to him, from the time of my poor grandmother's death, I,
and those near to me, all those about me, were pursued, not only by a
terrible fatality, but also by a being, who, for unknown motives,
wished to sow perpetual death and terror among those intimately
connected with us.

"The baron did not want to talk of all this, but I made him speak out.
Bit by bit, I learned the details of one of those tragedies which
touched my life when a child. I went to the National Library,
secretly, and looked through the newspapers of that period. I noticed
that in whatever concerned us, whether legally or privately, closely
or distantly, one name appeared and reappeared, a terrifying and
legendary name, the name of a being we think of but dare not
mention--the name of Fantomas!"

Henri de Loubersac was staggered. This statement of the girl he knew
as Wilhelmine de Naarboveck, far from impressing him favourably,
seemed to him an improbable story invented, every bit of it, for the
sole purpose of putting him on the wrong track.

He had learned to love this charming girl, believing her to be
sincere, honest, pure, brought up as a young girl should be, amidst
elegant and distinguished surroundings: now, behold an abyss opened
before his eyes, separating him from one whom he was now inclined to
consider an adventuress.

He remembered Juve's words!

Granting the truth of her statement, that a tragedy had shadowed her
young life and altered her existence, this did not prevent her from
havi