Was it on record, she
wondered, that any man had ever played that contemptible part? To run
away! And she had designed and worn that wonderful toilet; such a toilet
as Helen might have worn (she thought); such a toilet as Cleopatra might
have worn (she fancied); such a toilet as--as Sarah Bernhardt (she was
certain) would wear when impersonating a woman who had lost her soul for
the love of a man. Oh, had ever woman been so humiliated! She thought of
the way Sarah Bernhardt would act the part of one of those women if her
lover had run away from her outstretched arms,--and such a toilet,--only
it was not on record that the lover of any one of them had ever run
away. The lovers had been only too faithful; they had remained to be
hacked to pieces with a mediaeval knife sparkling with jewels, or to
swallow some curious poison out of a Byzantine goblet. She would have
a word or two to say to Herbert Courtland when he returned. She would
create the part of the woman whose lover has humiliated her.

This was her thought until her husband told her that he had sent that
letter to Herbert Courtland, and he would most likely dine with them on
the evening of his return.

Then it was it occurred to her that Herbert Courtland might by some
curious mischance--mischances occurred in many of Sarah Bernhardt's
plays--have come to hear that she had paid that rather singular visit to
Phyllis Ayrton, just at the hour that she had named in that letter which
she had written to him. What difference did that make in regard to his
unparalleled flight? He was actually aboard the yacht _Water Nymph_
before she had rung for her brougham to take her to Phyllis'. He had
been the first to fly.

Then she began to think, as she had thought once before, of her
husband's sudden return,--the return of a husband at the exact hour
named in the letter to a lover was by no means an unknown incident in
a play of Sarah Bernhardt's,--and before she had continued upon this
course of thought for many minutes, she had come to the conclusion that
she would not be too hard on Herbert Courtland.

She was not too hard on him.

He had an interview with Mr. Linton at the city offices of the great
Taragonda Creek Mine. (The mine had, as has already been stated,
been discovered by Herbert Courtland during his early explorations in
Australia, and he had acquired out of his somewhat slender resources--he
had been poor in those days--about a square mile of the wretched c