“Do you think I am afraid to take the punishment for my own follies?” I asked indignantly.  “If I believed that, I would go and give myself up to-morrow.  Louis can give me away if he will, or you.  I don’t care a snap of the fingers.  But what I want you to understand is this.  Felicia is, I presume, your niece.  I should have been inclined to have doubted it, but I cannot disbelieve her own word.  I think myself that it is brutal to have brought such a child here and to have left her alone—­”

“She is not alone,” Delora interrupted stiffly.  “She has a companion.”

“Who arrived yesterday,” I continued.  “She has spent some very bad days alone, I can promise you that.”

“I have telephoned,” Delora said, “twice a day—­sometimes oftener.”

I laughed ironically.

“For your own sake or hers, I wonder,” I said.  “Anyhow, we can leave that alone.  What I want you to understand is this, that if there is indeed anything illegal or criminal in your secret doings over here, you must take care that Felicia is safely provided for if things should go against you.  She is not to be left there to be the butt of a great criminal action.  If I find that you or any of your friends are making use of her in any way whatever, I swear that you shall suffer for it!”

Delora smiled at me grimly.  He seemed in his few dry words to have revealed something of his stronger and less nervous self.

“You terrify me!” he said.  “Yet I think that we must go on pretty well as we are, even if my niece has been fortunate enough to enlist your sympathies on her behalf.  Never mind who I am, or what my business is in this country, young man.  It is not your affair.  You should have enough to think about yourself in this country of easy extradition.  My niece can look after herself.  So can I. We do not need your aid, or welcome your interference.”

“You insinuate,” I declared indignantly, “that your niece is one of your helpers!  I do not believe it!”

“Helpers in what?” he asked, with upraised eyebrows.

“God knows!” I exclaimed, a little impatiently.  “What you do, or what you try to do, is not my business.  Felicia is.  That is why I have warned you.”

“Am I to have the honor, then?” Delora asked, with a curl of his thin lips,—­

“You are,” I interrupted, “if you call it an honor, although to tell you frankly, as things are at present, I am not inclined to go about begging too many different people’s permission.  If it were not that my brother Dicky has just written over from Brazil to ask me to be civil to you and your niece, you wouldn’t have left this place so easily.”

“Your brother!” Delora said, looking at me uneasily.  “Say that again.”

“Certainly!” I answered.  “My brother Dicky, who is now out in Brazil, and who has written to me about you.  You met him there, of course?” I added.  “He stayed with you at—­let me see, what is the name of your place?” I asked suddenly.