much
to do with you. You remember, perhaps, that you came while we were at
luncheon the day after our ride into the Valley of the Shadow, and
proposed that we should all go to Monte Carlo on your motor-car, that we
should spend the afternoon in the Casino, and dine with you at the Hotel
de Paris? Virginia said that she had important letters to write, and
couldn't go; and her manner was rather distant."

"It chilled my heart."

"Well, she asked Sir Roger and Mr. Trent to come up to her sitting-room
after luncheon. Naturally, I was there too; I've been told to look upon
the room as my own. She did not tell what she had been doing in the
morning, but, wherever she had been, she had contrived to discover a good
deal more about the Dalahaide story than Sir Roger had been willing to
tell her the night before, and she announced boldly, that in spite of
everything, she believed Maxime Dalahaide was innocent. She demanded of
Roger--who has spent a good deal of time in France, you know, and is
supposed to be well up in French law--whether it wouldn't be possible to
have the case brought up again, with the best lawyers in the country,
expense to be no object. When Roger had shown her that the thing couldn't
be done, and there was no use discussing it, she wanted him to say that
by setting some wonderful detectives on the trail of the real criminal
the truth might be discovered, and the man unjustly accused brought home
in triumph from Noumea by a penitent Government. Sir Roger assured her
that was hopeless. That, in the first place, Maxime Dalahaide wasn't
innocent, and that, in the second place, even if he were, his innocence
would be still more impossible to prove after all these years than it
would have been at the time of the trial."

"What did she reply to that?"

"Nothing. She was silent and seemed impressed. She became very
thoughtful. Since then I have not heard her say one word of the
Dalahaides, except incidentally about the chateau, which she actually
means to buy, and have restored in time to come to it, if she likes, next
year. Now, I don't see why her interest in the Dalahaides, if she
continues to feel it, should interfere with her friendship for you."

Loria did not answer. He sat thinking intently, his dark eyes staring
unseeingly out of the window. At last he spoke. "Why--_why_ should she
interest herself in this cold-blooded murderer, whose best friends turned
from him in horror at his crime? Is it pure ph