Cynthia looked round at her visitor with a sort of timidity which she did not often exhibit. He was apparently about sixty years of age, broad-shouldered, and muscularly built, but with a stiffness of gait which seemed to be either the result of chronic rheumatism or of an accident which had partially disabled him. His face was brown, his eyes were dark and bright; but his hair and beard were almost white, although his eyebrows had not a grizzled tint. He was roughly but respectably dressed, and looked like a prosperous yeoman or an artisan of the better class. Cynthia glanced at him keenly, then seemed to gain confidence, and asked him to sit down. The visitor obeyed; but Cynthia continued standing, with her hands on the back of a heavy chair.

"Mr. Reuben Dare?" she said at length, as the old man did not speak.

"Come straight from Ameriky," said he—he sat bolt-upright on his chair, and looked at the girl with a steady interest and curiosity which almost embarrassed her—"and promised to look you up as soon as I got over here. Can you guess who 'twas I promised, missy?"

Cynthia grew first red and then white.

"No," she said; "I am not sure that I can."

"Is there nobody belonging to you that you haven't heard of for years and years?"

"Yes," said Cynthia; "I think perhaps there is."

"A man," said Mr. Reuben Dare, leaning forward with his hands on his knees, and trying to subdue his rather harsh voice to quietness—"a man as was related to you, maybe?"

"If you will say what you mean, I think I can answer you better," said Cynthia.

"Do you think I am going to say what I mean until I know what sort of a young woman you are, and how you'll take the news I bring you?" said the man.

With a somewhat savage and truculent air he drew his eyebrows down over his eyes as he spoke; but there was a touch of something else as well—of stirred emotion, of doubt, of troubled feeling—which dissipated Cynthia's fears at once. She left the chair which she had been grasping with one hand, and came closer to her visitor.

"I see that you are afraid to trust me," she said quickly. "You think that perhaps I am hard and worldly, and do not want to have anything to do with my relatives? That is not true. You are thinking—speaking—of my poor father perhaps. As long as I was a child—a mere girl—I did not think much about him, I was content to believe what people told me—not that he was guilty—I never believed that!—but that I could do nothing for him, and that I had better not interfere. When I was independent and beginning to think for myself—about six months ago—I found out what I might have done. Shall I go on to tell you what I did?"

"Yes, yes—go on!" The man's voice was husky; his wrinkled hand trembled as it lay upon his knee. He watched the girl's face with hungry eyes.

"I wrote to the Governor of the prison," said Cynthia, "and told him that I had only just discovered—having been such a child—that I could write to my father or see him at regular intervals, and that I should like to do so from time to time. He asked me in return how it was that an intimation—which had been forwarded, I believe, to certain persons interested in my welfare—of my father's fate had not been given to me. My father had, by a desperate effort, succeeded in escaping from Portland; he had never been recaptured; and, from certain information received, the authorities believed that he was dead. He added however that he had a shrewd suspicion that Andrew Westwood had thrown dust into the eyes of the police, had left the country, and was not dead at all."

"And begged you to communicate with the authorities if you heard from him, I suppose?"

"No; he did not go so far as that to the man's own daughter," said Cynthia calmly. "And it would, of course, have been useless if he had."

"Why—why?"

"Because," said the girl, her lips suddenly trembling and her eyes filling with tears—"because I love my father, and would do anything in the world for him—if he would let me. Can you not tell me where he is? I would give all I have to see him once again!"

Reuben Dare fidgeted in his chair, and half turned his face away. Then, without meeting her eager tearful eyes, he replied half sullenly—

"The Governor was right. He got away—away to America."

"Oh, then he is living still? He is well?"

"Oh, yes—he's living, and well enough! He hasn't done so badly neither. He got some land and 'struck ile,' as they say in America; and living under another name, and nobody knowing anything about him—he—well, he's had fair luck."

"And you come from him—you are a friend of his? Did he want to hear of me?"

"Yes, missy, he did. But he would scarce ha' known you if he'd met you in the street—you, grown so tall and handsome and dressed so fine. It was your name as gave him the clue—'Cynthia'—'Cynthia West'; for he read in the papers as you were singing at concerts, and he says to himself, 'Why, that's my gal, sure enough; and she hain't forgotten her mother's name!'"

"Go on!" said Cynthia quickly.

"Go on? What do you mean?" asked Reuben Dare, a little suspiciously. "There's nothing more to say, is there? And he asked me to make inquiries while I was in England—that was all."

"Oh, no, that was not all!" said Cynthia, drawing nearer, and holding out her hands a little, like one under hypnotic influence, fascinated by a power over which she had no control. "I can tell you the rest. The more he thought of his child, and the more he remembered how she used to love him and trust in him, the more he felt that he could not stay away from her; and so, although the risk was great—terrible—he determined to come back to England and see with his own eyes whether she was safe and well. And when he saw her"—there was a sob in her voice—"he said to himself that perhaps after all she was a hard, unfeeling creature who had forgotten him, or a wicked, treacherous woman who would betray her own father, and that he would go away back to America and never see her again, forgetting to ask whether she had not a heart and a memory too, and whether it might not be that she had loved him all her life, and whether she was not longing to fall upon his neck and kiss his dear face, and tell him that she wanted a father for many, many dreary years, and that she trusts him, believes in him, loves him with all her heart! Oh, father, father!"—and Cynthia lay sobbing on his breast.

She had thrown herself impulsively on her knees beside him; her arms were round his neck, and he was covering her face with kisses. He did not attempt to deny that she had spoken the truth—that he was indeed her father—the man who had been condemned to death, and whom she had believed until this moment to be in America, if still indeed alive; but neither did he try to prove the fact. He sat still, with his arms round her, and—to her surprise—the tears running down his cheeks as freely as they were running down her own. She looked up at him at last and smiled rather piteously in his face.

"Dear father," she said, "and have you come all this way and run into so much danger just to see me?"

"Yes, I have, Cynthy," said the man who called himself Reuben Dare. "I said to myself, I can't get on any longer without seeing her, any way. If that's my girl that sings—as her mother did before her—I shall know her in a trice. But, bless you, my girl, I didn't—not till you began to speak! And then t'was just like your mother."

"Am I so much altered?" said Cynthia wistfully.

"As much as you ought to be, my beauty, and no more. You ain't like the skinny little bit of a thing that ran wild round Beechfield lanes; but then you don't want to be. You're a good deal like your mother; but she wasn't as dark as you. And, being so different, you see, I thought you might be different in yourself—not ready to acknowledge your father as belonging to you at all, maybe; and so I'd try you with a message first and see what you said to that."

"You are altered too, father."

"Yes, my deary, I'm altered too. Hain't I had enough to alter me? Injustice and oppression have almost broke my heart, and ague and fever's taken the strength out o' my limbs, and a knock I got in the States three years ago has nigh crippled me. I'm a broken-down man, with only strength left for one thing—and that's to curse the hard-hearted ruffian, whoever he was, that spoiled my life for me, and thought to hang me by the neck or shut me up in prison for the rest of my days. If ever I could come across him, I'd do my best to make him suffer as I have suffered. I pray God night and day that He'll let me see that rascal on his knees to me yet before I die!"

His voice had grown loud and fierce, his eyes shone beneath the shaggy eyebrows, his hand shook as he raised it to call down vengeance on the man who had left him to his fate. Cynthia trembled in spite of her love for him—the tones, the look, brought back memories which made her feel that her father was in a great many ways unchanged, and that the wild, lawless nature of the man might be suppressed but never utterly subdued. She did not feel the slightest abatement of her love for him on this account; but it suddenly made her aware of the dangers and difficulties of his position, and aroused her fears for his safety, even in that house.

"Father," she said "are you sure that nobody will remember you?"

Westwood laughed harshly.

"They're not likely to know me," he said. "I've taken care to change my looks since then;" and, by a sudden movement of his hand, he showed her that hair, beard, and moustache were all fictitious, and that beneath the silvery exterior there grew a scantier crop of sparse gray hair and whiskers, which recalled his former appearance much more clearly to his daughter's mind.

"Oh, don't take them off!" she cried. "Somebody may come in—the door is not locked! At another time, dear father, you will show me your real face, will you not?"

He looked at her with a mingling of pride and sorrow in his glance.

"And you ain't wanting me to be found out then—you don't want to give me up to the police?"

"Father, how can you think of such a thing?"

"Some women-folks would think of it, my girl. But you—you're fond of your father still, Cynthy?"

She answered by taking his rough hand in her own and kissing it tenderly.

"And you don't believe I killed Mr. Vane down at Beechfield—eh, Cynthy? Because if you believe it, you know, you and me had better part without more words about it. Least said, soonest mended.""I do not believe it—I never did!" said Cynthia proudly.

"On your word and honor and Bible-oath, Cynthia?"

"On my word and honor and on my Bible-oath, father," she said, repeating the words, because she saw that he attached especial importance to the formula. "I never believed and never will believe that you were guilty of Sydney Vane's murder! My father"—she said it as proudly as if he had been a Royal Prince—"was never capable of a base and wicked deed!"

"It's her mother's voice," murmured the man, raising his hand to his eyes, as if to shut out the sight of the young girl's face, and to abstract himself from everything but the sound, "and it's her mother's trust in me! Cynthia, my dear, what do you know o' your father to make you so ready to stand by him?" There was a great and an unaccustomed tenderness in his tone. "I'm a common man, and I've spent years of my life in gaol, and I was a tramp and a poacher—I won't deny it—in the olden days; and before that—well, before that, I was a gamekeeper on a big estate—turned away in disgrace, my dear, because my master's daughter fell in love with me. You never heard that before, did you?—though any one would guess that you didn't come of a common stock! Wetheral was her name—Cynthia Wetheral of Bingley Park, in Gloucestershire. There are relatives of hers living there still; but they don't acknowledge us—they won't have anything to do with you, Cynthia, my girl. I married her and took her away wi' me; and for twelve blessed months we were as happy as the day was long; and then she died." He paused a little, and caressed Cynthia's head with his hand.

"You're like her, my dear. But I'm only a low common sort o' man that sunk lower and lower since the day she died; and you've no call to trust me unless you feel inclined—no call in the very least. If you say you don't quite believe my word, my pretty, I'll not cut up rough—I'll just go away quiet, and never trouble you any more."

"Father," said Cynthia, "listen to me one moment. We were separated when I was only eleven years old; but don't you think that in eleven years I could learn something of your real disposition—your true nature? I remember how you used to care for me, how tender and kind you were to me, although you might perhaps seem gloomy and morose to all the world beside. I remember your bringing home a dog with a broken leg, and nursing it till it was cured. You had pets of all kinds—birds, beasts, flowers. You never did a cruel thing in your life; and how could I think then, that you would lie in wait to kill a man out of mere spite and revenge—a man, too, with a wife and a child—a little girl like me? I knew you better, father, all the time!"

Westwood shook his head doubtfully.

"Maybe you're right," he said, "and maybe wrong. I've seen rough deeds done in my day, and never lifted a hand to interfere. I won't deny but what I did lie in wait for Mr. Vane that very afternoon—but with no thought of murder in my mind. I meant to tell him what my opinion was of him and of his doings; for there was carryings-on that I didn't approve of, and it's my belief that in those very carryings-on lies the key of the mystery. I've thought it all out in prison, slow-like—at nights when I lay in bed, and days when I was hewing stone. I won't tell you the story, my pretty; it ain't fit for the likes of you. But there was a woman mixed up in it; and, if there was any man who had rights over the woman—sweetheart or husband, brother or father, or such-like—it's in that quarter that you and me should look for the real murderer of Sydney Vane."

"Can't we do anything, father? Won't you tell me the whole story?"

"Not now, my girl; I must be going."

"Where are you going, father? Will you be in a safe place?"

"Quite safe, my dear—quite safe! Nobody would know me in this guise, would they? I'm at No. 119 Isabella Street, Camden Town—quite a little out-o'-the-way place—just the sort to suit a quiet respectable-looking man like me." He gave vent to a grim little chuckle as he went on. "They don't know who they've got hold of, do they? Maybe they wouldn't be quite so pleased if they did."

"May I come and see you there, father?"

"Well, my girl, I think not. Such a—a splendid-looking sort of a party as you've turned out coming to visit me would make people talk. And we don't want people to talk, do we? Isn't there any quiet spot where you and me could meet and walk about a bit? Kensington Gardens; maybe, or Regent's Park?"Cynthia thought that Kensington Gardens would be quiet enough in the morning for their purpose, and it was agreed that they should meet there the next day at noon. Westwood's disguise was so perfect that he did not attempt to seclude himself during the day.

"And then," he said, "we can talk about you coming over to Ameriky, and living happy and quiet somewhere with me."

"Oh, I can't leave England!" said Cynthia, with a sudden little gasp. "Don't ask me, father; I can't possibly go away."

He looked at her keenly and scrutinisingly for a moment, and then he said—

"That means that you've got a reason for wanting to stop in England. That means that you've got a sweetheart—a lover, my pretty—and that you won't leave him. I know the ways of women well enough. I don't want to force you, my girl; but I hope that he's worthy of the woman you've grown to be. Tell me his name."