ed off the slate was precisely what she had anticipated.

Yet, somehow, it disappointed her. She felt instinctively that her
triumph was burning fast to ashes.

"Keep clear," she faltered.

"Constance," he urged, approaching closer and taking her cold hand.

Was she to be the one to hold him back in any way from the new life
that was now before him? What if Drummond, in his animosity, ever got
the truth? She gently unclasped her hand from his. No, that happiness
was not for her.

"I am afraid I am a crook at heart, Murray," she said sadly. "I have
gone too far to turn back. The brand is on me. But I am not altogether
bad--yet. Think of me always with charity. Yes," she cried wildly, "I
must return to my loneliness. No, do not try to stop me, you have no
right," she added bitterly as the reality of her situation burned
itself into her heart.

She broke away from him wildly, but with set purpose. The world had
taken away her husband; now it was a lover; the world must pay.

CHAPTER III

THE GUN RUNNERS

"We'll land here, Mrs. Dunlap."

Ramon Santos, terror of the Washington State Department and of a half
dozen consulates in New York, stuck a pin in a map of Central America
spread out on a table before Constance.

"Insurrectos will meet us," he pursued, then added, "but we must have
money, first, my dear Senora, plenty of money."

Dark of eye and skin, with black imperial and mustache, tall, straight
as an arrow, Santos had risen and was now gazing down with rapt
attention, not at the map, but at Constance herself.

Every curve of her face and wave of her hair, every line of her trim
figure which her filmy gown seemed to accentuate rather than conceal
added fire to his ardent glances.

He touched lightly another pin sticking in a little, almost microscopic
island of the Caribbean.

"Our plan, it is simple," he continued with animation in spite of his
foreign accent. "On this island a plant to print paper money, to coin
silver. With that we shall land, pay our men as they flock to us,
collect forces, seize cities, appropriate the customs. Once we start,
it is easy."

Constance looked up quickly. "But that is counterfeiting," she
exclaimed.

"No," rejoined Santos, "it is a war measure. We--the provisional
government--merely coin our own money. Besides, it will not be done in
this country. It will not come under your laws."

There was a magnetism about the man that fascinated her, as he stood