I have now informed you of all that I want to know.  Whatever the information may be, it is most important that it shall be information which I can implicitly trust.  Please address to me, when you write, under cover to the friend whose letter I inclose.

I beg your acceptance—­as time is of importance—­of a check for preliminary expenses, and remain, sir, your faithful servant,

AMBROSE BENWELL.

II.

To the Secretary, Society of Jesus, Rome.

I inclose a receipt for the remittance which your last letter confides to my care.  Some of the money has been already used in prosecuting inquiries, the result of which will, as I hope and believe, enable me to effectually protect Romayne from the advances of the woman who is bent on marrying him.

You tell me that our Reverend Fathers, lately sitting in council on the Vange Abbey affair, are anxious to hear if any positive steps have yet been taken toward the conversion of Romayne.  I am happily able to gratify their wishes, as you shall now see.

Yesterday, I called at Romayne’s hotel to pay one of those occasional visits which help to keep up our acquaintance.  He was out, and Penrose (for whom I asked next) was with him.  Most fortunately, as the event proved, I had not seen Penrose, or heard from him, for some little time; and I thought it desirable to judge for myself of the progress that he was making in the confidence of his employer.  I said I would wait.  The hotel servant knows me by sight.  I was shown into Romayne’s waiting-room.

This room is so small as to be a mere cupboard.  It is lighted by a glass fanlight over the door which opens from the passage, and is supplied with air (in the absence of a fireplace) by a ventilator in a second door, which communicates with Romayne’s study.  Looking about me, so far, I crossed to the other end of the study, and discovered a dining-room and two bedrooms beyond—­the set of apartments being secluded, by means of a door at the end of the passage, from the other parts of the hotel.  I trouble you with these details in order that you may understand the events that followed.

I returned to the waiting-room, not forgetting of course to close the door of communication.

Nearly an hour must have passed before I heard footsteps in the passage.  The study door was opened, and the voices of persons entering the room reached me through the ventilator.  I recognized Romayne, Penrose—­and Lord Loring.

The first words exchanged among them informed me that Romayne and his secretary had overtaken Lord Loring in the street, as he was approaching the hotel door.  The three had entered the house together—­at a time, probably, when the servant who had admitted me was out of the way.  However it may have happened, there I was, forgotten in the waiting-room!