“Not so, my friend, far from it.  You are a very wily, clever dog.  But—­well, as we say in Italy, ’if you put a cat into gloves, she will not catch mice.’  You have been in gloves ever since you knew Madonna was a widow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Very well you know what I mean!”

And that was the end of their conversation, for Brendon frowned in silence and Giuseppe began to slack the engines as they reached the landing stage.

“Something tells me I shall meet you again, Marco,” he said as they shook hands and prepared to part; and Brendon, who shared that impression strongly enough, nodded.

“It may be so,” he answered.

For a period of several months, however, the detective was not to hear more of those who had played their small parts in the unsolved mystery.  He was busy enough and in some measure rehabilitated a tarnished reputation by one brilliant achievement in his finest manner.  But success did not restore his self-respect; and it diminished in no degree the fever burning at his heart.

Once he received a note from Jenny telling him that she hoped to see him in London before leaving for Italy; and the fact that she had decided to join her uncle gave him some peace; but he heard nothing further and his reply to Mrs. Pendean’s communication, which had come from “Crow’s Nest,” won no response.  Weeks passed and whether she remained still in Devonshire, was in London, or had gone to Italy, he could not know, for she did not write again.

He dispatched a long letter in early spring to the care of Albert Redmayne, but this also won no response.  And then came an explanation.  She had been in London, but kept him ignorant of the fact for sufficient reasons.  She had neither thought of him nor wanted him, for her life was full of another.

On a day in late March, Brendon received a little, triangular-shaped box through the post from abroad, and opening it, stared at a wedge of wedding cake.  With the gift came a line—­one only:  “Kind and grateful remembrances from Giuseppe and Jenny Doria.”

She sent no direction that might enable him to acknowledge her gift; but there was a postal stamp upon the covering and Brendon noted that the box came from Italy—­from Ventimiglia, a town which Doria once mentioned in connection with the ruined castle and vanished splendours of his race.

And yet, despite this sudden, though not surprising, event, there persisted with Mark a conviction that this did not mean the end.  Time was to bring him into close companionship with Jenny again:  he knew it for an integral factor of the future; but the persistence of this impression could not serve to lighten his melancholy before an accomplished fact.  That he might live to be of infinite service to Jenny a subconscious assurance convinced him; but he must say good-bye to love forever.  Henceforth hope was dead and when duty called he knew not what form his duty might assume.  Through a sleepless night he retraced every moment of his intercourse with Doria’s wife and much tormented himself.