Cynthia's father did not get his question answered, because at that moment a thundering knock at the front-door announced the return of Madame, and there was rather a hasty struggle to get him away from the house without encountering that lady's sharp eyes and vivacious questioning, which Cynthia was not at all sure that he could meet with equanimity. For herself she felt at that moment equal to any struggle involving either cunning or courage. She could combat to death for one she loved.

"Who was that man, carissima? Why was he here at this hour of the night? You are a little imprudent, are you not, to receive such visitors without me?" said Madame, having caught a glimpse of the intruder's retiring figure.

Cynthia laughed.

"He is venerable, Madame—white-bearded, old, and a relative—an uncle from America whom I have not seen since I was a child. I believe that he has made a fortune and wants to endow me with it. We shall see!""Ah, my angel, if he would do that," cried Madame cheerfully, "we would welcome him at any hour of the day or night, would not we? Bid him to dinner with thee, little one, or to tea, after thy English fashion—as thou wilt. The uncle with money is always a desired visitor."

And thus Cynthia escaped further questioning, although at the cost of an untruth which she did not consider it her duty to repent. "For surely," she said to herself, "it is right for a daughter to sacrifice anything and everything to her father's safety! I was ashamed of having to tell Hubert what was not true just for my own benefit; but I am not ashamed of deceiving Madame for my father's sake. I am sorry—ah, yes, I am sorry! But what can I do?" And in the solitude of her own room Cynthia wrung her hands together, and shed a few bitter tears over the hardness and strangeness of her fate.

To one who knew all the facts of her story and her father's story, it might indeed have been a matter for meditation that "wrong-doing never ends"—that, because Sydney Vane had been an unprincipled man and Florence Lepel a woman without a conscience, therefore a child of whom they never heard had grown up without the presence of a father's love, or the innate reverence for truth that prevailed in the heart of a Jeanie Deans. Cynthia was no Jeanie Deans; she was a faulty but noble-hearted woman, with a nature that had suffered some slight warping from the effect of adverse circumstance.

Cynthia and her father met the next morning under the spreading branches of the trees in Kensington Gardens; and there, as they walked up and down together, Westwood unfolded his plans. From what he let slip—although he tried not to be too definite—it was evident that he had made considerable sums of money, or what he thought such; and he wanted Cynthia to give up working, and "go West" with him. He assured her that she should have every comfort, every luxury; that he was likely to make more and more money as time went on, and that he might even become a millionaire. Would she not partake of the magnificence that was in store for her? But Cynthia shook her head. And then he spoke of his loneliness, of his long absence from his only child, and his desire to have a home of his own; now that he began to feel the infirmities of age, he not only wanted a daughter as an ornament to his house, but as the prop of his declining years. And at this Cynthia shed tears and began to waver. Ought she not to go with her father? she asked herself. It might be better for Hubert, as well as for her, if she went away; and, even if at the end of two years she became Hubert's wife, she would at any rate have had two years with her father. And, if Hubert married "the other girl," she would stay with her father until his life's end—or hers. But the fact remained at the end of all arguments—she did not want to go.

"What do you want to stay in England for?" Westwood said at length. "Is it to make money? I've got enough for both of us. Is it to sing in public? You'll get bigger audiences over there, my girl. If you love your old father as you say you do, why won't you come along with him?" He paused, and added, almost in a whisper, "Unless there's somebody you like better, I don't see why you want to stay."

Cynthia's face turned crimson immediately. Her father's words made her feel very guilty. She loved him—true; but she loved Hubert better, and she had not known it until that moment. She knew it thoroughly now.

"Well," said Westwood, in a peculiarly dogged tone, "I see what's up. Who is he?"

"He is a very clever man, father," said Cynthia, keeping her hot face away from him as much as possible—"a literary man; he writes plays and novels and poetry. He is thought a great deal of in London."

"As poor as a rat, and wants you to keep him. Is that it?"

"Oh, no, indeed, father! He makes a great deal of money. It was he who sent me to Italy to study music; he paid for me to live where I do, with Madame della Scala."

They were in a quiet part of the Gardens, and her father suddenly laid an iron grip upon her wrist.

"Look at me," he burst out—"tell me the truth! You—you ain't—you ain't bound to him in any way?" He dare not, after all, put his sudden suspicion into plainer words. "It's all fair and square? He's asked you to be his wife, and not——"

Cynthia wrenched away her arm.

"I did not think that my own father would insult me!" she said, in a voice which, though low, vibrated with anger. "I am quite well able to take care of my own honor and dignity; and Mr. Lepel would never dream of assailing either."

Then she broke down a little, and a few tears made their way over the scarlet of her cheeks; but of these signs of distress her father took no notice. He stood still in the middle of the path down which they had been walking, and repeated the name incredulously.

"'Lepel'! 'Lepel'! Is that your sweetheart's name?"

"'Hubert Lepel.' It is a well-known name," said Cynthia, with head erect.

"Hubert Lepel! Not the man at Beechfield, the cousin of those Vanes?" He spoke in a whisper, with his eyes fixed on his daughter's face.

Cynthia turned very pale.

"I do not know. Oh, it can't be the same," she said.

"It's not likely that there are two men of the same name. He was a cousin of the man who was killed, I tell you; and he was the brother—the brother——" Suddenly Westwood stopped short; his eyes fell to the ground, his breathing quickened; he thrust his hands into his pockets and frowned heavily as he reflected. "Have I got a clue?" he said, more to himself than to Cynthia. "He's the brother of that woman—the woman that Sydney Vane used to meet in the wood so often, and thought that nobody knew. Did he—did he——" But, raising his eyes suddenly, he saw the whiteness of Cynthia's face, and did not finish his question. "Listen to me!" he said, with sudden sternness. "This man belongs to them that put me in prison and believe me to have murdered Sydney Vane. Do you understand that, girl?"

"Father, he would trust you—he would believe in you—if once he saw you and talked to you."

"So you mean to betray me to him, do you?"

"Father—dear father!"

"If you say a word to him about my being in England, Cynthia, you may just as well put a rope round my neck or give me a dose of poison. For buried alive at Portland I never will be again!"

"He would no more betray you, father, than——"

"Promise me that you'll not breathe a word to him about me!""I promise."

"And swear?"

"I swear, father—not until you give me leave."

"I shall never give you leave. Do you want to kill me, Cynthia? I'd never have thought it of you after all you said! Come, my girl, you needn't cry; I did not mean to suspect you; but I'm so used to being on my guard. Does he know whose daughter you are?"

"No, father."

"You haven't dared to tell him, and yet you wanted to put my safety in his hands!"

"I am sure he is too kind, too noble, to think of betraying any one!" Cynthia pleaded; but her father would not hear.

"Tut! If he thinks I murdered his cousin, he wouldn't feel any particular call to be kind to me, I guess. I should like to understand all about this affair, Cynthia. Come, sit down on this bench here under the trees, and tell me about it. Don't vex yourself over what I said; I was but carried away by the heat of the moment. Now are you promised to this Mr. Lepel—engaged to him, as you young folk call it?"

"I don't know whether I can tell you anything, father," murmured Cynthia.

"You'd better," said Westwood quietly, "because it hangs on a thread whether I ain't going to denounce Mr. Lepel as the man that killed Mr. Sydney Vane. I never thought of him before, although I did see him at the trial and knew that he'd been hanging round the place. He was her brother, sure enough—he had a motive. Well, Cynthia?"

"Father, if you are thinking such terrible things of Hubert, how can I tell you anything? You know I—I love him; if you accuse him of a crime, I shall cling to him still—and love him still—and save him if I can."

"At your father's expense, girl?"

She writhed at the question, and twisted her fingers nervously together, but did not speak. Westwood waited for a minute or two, and then resumed—this time very bitterly.

"It's always so! The lover always drives the parent out of the young folks' hearts. For this man—that you haven't known more than a few months, I suppose—you'd give up your father to worse than the gallows—to the misery of a life sentence—and be glad, maybe, to see the last of him! If it was him or me, you would save him—and perhaps you're in the right of it. I wish," said the man, turning away his face—"I wish to God that I'd never come back to England, nor seen the face of my girl again!"

Cynthia had been physically incapable hitherto of stemming the flow of his words; but now, although she was trembling with excitement and sorrow and indignation, she answered her father's accusation resolutely.

"You are wrong, father. I will not sacrifice you to him. But you must not expect me to sacrifice him to you either. My heart is large enough to hold you both."

There was a pathos in the tone of her last few words which impressed even Westwood's not very plastic nature. He turned towards her, noting with half-unconscious anxiety the whiteness of the girl's lips, the shadow that seemed to have descended upon her eyes. He put out his rough hand and touched her daintily gloved fingers.

"Don't be put out by what I say, my girl! If I speak sharp, it's because I feel deep. I won't be hard on any one you care for, I give you my word; but it'll be the best thing for you to be fair and square with me and tell me all about him. Are you going to marry him?"

"He wishes to marry me," said Cynthia, yielding, with a sigh; "but there has been an arrangement—a sort of family arrangement, I understand—by which he must—ought to marry a young lady in two years, when she is twenty or twenty-one, if she consents and if she is strong enough. She is ill now, and she does not seem to care for him. That is all I know. I have promised to marry him if he is free at the end of the two years."

It sounded a lame story—worse, when she told it, than when she had discussed it with Hubert Lepel or wept over it in her own room. Westwood uttered a growl of anger.

"And you're at his beck and call like that! He is to take you or leave you as he pleases! Pretty state of matters for a girl like you! Why, with your face and your pretty voice and your education, I should think that you could have half Lunnon if you chose!"

"Not I," said Cynthia, laughing with a little of her old spirit—"or, if I had, it would be the wrong half, father. Besides, Mr. Lepel is not to blame. He—he would marry me to-morrow, I believe, if I would allow it; it was I that arranged to wait. I would rather wait. Why should I marry anybody before I have seen the world?"

"Where does Mr. Lepel live, Cynthy?" said Westwood slowly, as if he had not been attending very much to what she said.

Cynthia hesitated; then she gave him Hubert's address. She knew that her father could easily get it elsewhere, and that it would only irritate him if she refused. Besides, she had too much confidence in her lover to think that harm could come of her father's knowledge of the place in which he lived. But she was a little surprised when her father at once stood, up and said, with his former placidity of tone—

"Well, then, my dear, I'm a-going round to look at Mr. Lepel. I'm not going to harm him, nor even maybe to speak to him; but I want to have a little look at him before I see you again. And then I shall maybe go out of town for a bit. There are one or two places I want to look at again. So you needn't be surprised if you don't hear from me again just yet a while. I'll write when I come back."

"Oh, father, you will not run into any danger, will you?"

"Not a bit, my dear. There's not a soul on earth would know me as I am now. Don't you be afraid! I'll walk back with you to the gate, and, then we'd better say good-bye. If you want anything special, write to me—Reuben Dare, you know—at the address I gave you; but even then, my girl, don't you mention names. It's a dangerous thing to do on paper."

"I'll remember," said Cynthia, with unwonted submissiveness.

They parted at the gate, and Westwood, without looking round, went some paces in the easterly direction which he had chosen to take. But all at once he heard a light footstep behind him, and a small gloved hand was laid upon his arm. It was Cynthia, slightly flushed and panting a little, her eyes unusually bright. She ran after him with a last word to say.

"Father," she said, "you will remember, will you not, that, although I love him, I love you too?"

"Do you, Cynthia?" said the man, rather sadly. "Well, maybe—maybe.""And that you are to take care of yourself for my sake?"

"Eh? For your sake? Yes, my dear—yes."

"Good-bye, dear father!"

He nodded simply in reply; but, as he pursued his way eastward, his heart grew softer towards his child's lover than it would otherwise have been. How beautiful she had looked with those flushed cheeks and shining eyes! What was he that he should interfere with her happiness? If the man that she loved was good and true why should he not marry her, although he was a kinsman of the Vanes and the brother of a woman whom Westwood held in peculiar abhorrence? For accident had revealed to him many years before the relation between Sydney Vane and Florence Lepel, and she had seemed to him then and ever since to be less of a woman than a fiend. Yet, being somewhat slow in drawing conclusions, he had never associated her or her brother with Mr. Vane's death, until, in the solitude of his cell, he had laboriously "put two and two together" in a way which had not suggested itself either to himself or to his defenders at the time of the trial. He himself, from a strange mixture of delicate feeling and gruff reserve, had not chosen to tell what he knew about Miss Lepel and Sydney Vane; and only when it was too late did it occur to him that his silence had cost him his freedom, and might have cost him his life. He saw it all clearly now. It was quite plain to him that in some way or other Mr. Vane's death had been caused through his unfaithfulness to his wife. Some one had wished to punish him—some friend of hers, some friend of Miss Lepel's. Right enough he deserved to be killed, said Westwood to himself, as he elaborated his theory. If only the slayer, the avenger, had not refused to take the responsibility of his act upon his own shoulders! "If only he hadn't been cur enough;" Westwood muttered to himself, as he went along the London streets, "to leave me—a poor man, a common man, that only Cynthia loved—to bear the blame!"