s, but, even at my age, I still wish to have a
little happiness myself. There's never a time in one's life, I suppose,
when one doesn't long to be happy. But I don't want to interfere with
your happiness, I only want to interfere between you and a very great
danger, something which would certainly bring disaster into your life."

She stopped speaking. She was looking grave, indeed almost tragically
sad, but calm and resolute. The spots of red had faded out of her
cheeks. There was no fever in her manner. Miss Van Tuyn's wonder grew
as she looked at her former friend, who now dominated her, and began to
extort from her a strange and unwilling admiration, which recalled to
her the admiration of that past time when she had first met Alick Craven
in this drawing-room.

After a long pause Lady Sellingworth continued, with a sort of strong
simplicity in which there was moral power:

"Don't be angry with me, Beryl, when I tell you that you have one of my
dominant characteristics."

"What is it?" Miss Van Tuyn asked, in a low voice.

"Vanity. You and I--we were both born with great vanity in us. Mine has
troubled me, tortured me, been a curse to me, all my life. It led me at
last into a very horrible situation, in which the--that man who calls
himself Nicolas Arabian was mixed up."

"But you said you didn't know him, that you had never known him!"

"That's quite true. I have never spoken to him in my life. But it was he
who led me to change my life. You must have heard of it. You must have
heard how, ten years ago, I suddenly gave up everything and began to
lead a life of retirement."

"Yes."

"But for that man I should probably never have done that. But for him I
might have been going about London now with dyed hair, pretending to be
ten or fifteen years younger than I really am."

"But--if you never knew him? I can't understand!"

"Did you ever hear that about ten years ago I lost a great quantity
of jewels, that they were stolen out of a train at the Gare du Nord in
Paris?"

A look of fear, almost of horror, came into Beryl Van Tuyn's eyes. She
got up from the sofa on which she was sitting.

"Adela!"

Already she knew what was coming, what Lady Sellingworth was going to
tell her. She even knew the very words Lady Sellingworth was about to
say, and when she heard them it was as if she herself had spoken them.

"That man stole them."

"Adela!"

"You said that he had money, that he was not obliged to work.