"The risk is, alas! too great," he declared. "Already you are a marked man. Your only chance of escape is to take Sylvia's advice and to go into hiding. Go away--into the country--and live in some quiet, remote village under another name. It is your best mode of evading disaster. To remain and become the lover of Sylvia Pennington is, I tell you, the height of folly--it is suicide!"
"Let it be so," I responded in quiet defiance. "I will never forsake the woman I love. Frankly, I suspect a hidden motive in this suggestion of yours; therefore I refuse to accept it."
"Not even to save my life. This is surely my own affair."
"I shall protect Sylvia, never fear. I am not afraid. Let our enemies betray their presence by sign or word, and I will set myself out to combat them. They have already those crimes in Bayswater to account for. And they will take a good deal of explaining away."
"Then you really intend to reveal the secret of that house in Porchester Terrace?" he asked, not without some apprehension.
"My enemies, you say, intend to plot and encompass my death. Good! Then I shall take my own means of vindication. Naturally I am a quiet, law-abiding man. But if any enemy rises against me without cause, then I strike out with a sledgehammer."
"I am, where my love is concerned," I admitted. "Sylvia has promised to-day that she will become my wife. The future is surely our own affair, Mr. Shuttleworth--not yours!"
"And if her father forbids?" he asked quite quietly, his eyes fixed straight upon my well-beloved.
"Let me meet him face to face," I said in defiance. "He will not interfere after I have spoken," I added, with confidence. "I, perhaps, know more than you believe concerning him."
Sylvia started, staring at me, her face blanched in an instant. The scene was tragic and painful.
"What do you know?" she asked breathlessly.
"Nothing, dearest, which will interfere with our love," I reassured her. "Your father's affairs are not yours, and for his doings you cannot be held responsible."
She exchanged a quick glance with Shuttleworth, I noticed.
Then it seemed as though a great weight were lifted from her mind by my words, for, turning to me, she smiled sweetly, saying--
"Ah! how can I thank you sufficiently? I am helpless and defenceless. If I only dared, I could tell you a strange story--for surely mine is as strange as any ever printed in the pages of fiction. But Mr. Shuttleworth will not permit it."