dal, he ran no great risk.
He had lived on tenter-hooks at first, in Germany. Chance might have
brought him face to face with Ave Maria, on the stage of a music-hall.
This danger was not to be feared now, so far as he knew. Ave Maria and her
brother Martello were no longer fit stars for Europe, nor for North
America. He was too well known to the agencies; his brutality had produced
too many complaints, too many denunciations to the police; it discredited
any theater employing him. He might have come to Europe--who knew?--to try
to get hold of the Bambinis, now that the old man had not much longer to
live. But that was not very likely, either. An artiste, come across by
accident, had seen the pair at Iquique, in a wretched circus that was
doing the coast of Chili. He gave Trampy details: poor Ave Maria had grown
very ugly; a body all skin and bone and nerves; no hips, no chest; nothing
of the woman about her; in the last stages of consumption; and finished,
as an artiste, done for; no spring left in her overworked thighs, no
suppleness in her loins: even her brother, that brute, could get nothing
out of her now. And Trampy, who knew Chili, followed them, in his mind, on
their tour along the coast, from Iquique to Copiapo, to Valdivia: a trying
climate, biting winds which would kill her on the spot, unless she went
and perished in the fever-stricken plains of the Argentine.... When people
had fallen so low as that, they did not rise again: there was nothing to
fear from that side. But her presence was not necessary; the danger still
existed. There were documents, in black and white. Their names were
bracketed on a register somewhere or other: he knew where. It was better,
therefore, in every way, not to call attention to himself. Meanwhile, he
was playing a nice trick on Lily and her Jimmy. And Lily was Mrs. Trampy
and Mrs. Trampy she would remain; and that was all there was about it.

But it was no use for Lily to give herself a headache trying to make out
why and how. She did not guess Trampy's secret thoughts, any more than he
suspected the actual nature of her relations with Jimmy. For her, too, one
thing was certain: Mrs. Trampy she was and Mrs. Trampy she would remain!
She would never be free; she would always be chained to that tramp
cyclist! And, if a match should happen to turn up for her among her
admirers, the architect, for instance--you can never tell: plenty of
others had already proposed for her hand in marri