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?"