ns of pleasure, pride, and confusion.
"And you've just found this out?"

"I have just found it out from Mr. X himself, whom I met for the first
time to-day--in poor Irene's flat. I never assisted at such a scene.
Never! It positively unnerved me. Mr. X is a man of fifty-five,
fabulously wealthy, used to command, autocratic, famous in all the Stock
Exchanges of the world. When I tell you that he cried like a child ...
Oh! I never had such an experience. His infatuation for
Irene--indescribable! Indescribable! She had made her own terms with
him. He told me himself. Astounding terms, but for him it was those
terms or nothing. He accepted them--had to. She was to be quite free.
The most absolute discretion was to be observed. He came to Paris or
London every year, and sometimes she went to America. She utterly
refused to live in America."

"Why didn't she marry him?"

"He has a wife. I have no doubt in my own mind that one of his reasons
for accepting her extraordinary terms was to keep in close touch with
her at all costs in case his wife should die. Otherwise he might have
lost her altogether. He told me many things about poor Irene's family in
Indianapolis which I will not repeat. It was true that they had money,
as Irene said; but as for anything else ...! The real name was not
Wheeler."

"Has he been over, here long?"

"He landed at Cherbourg last night. Just arrived."

"And she killed herself at once."

"Whether the deed was done immediately before or immediately after his
arrival is not yet established. And I need hardly tell you that Mr. X
has already fixed up arrangements not to appear in the case at all. But
one thing is sure--she had made all the preparations for suicide, made
them with the greatest care. The girls saw her yesterday, and both Lois
and I spoke to her on the telephone this morning. Not a trace of
anything in her voice. I assume she had given a message for Lois to the
chauffeur."

"Yes," said George. "We never dreamed----"

"Of course not. Of course not."

"But why did she----"

"Another man, my dear sir! Another man! A young man named
Defourcambault, in the French Embassy in London."

"Oh, him!" George burst out. "I know him," he added fiercely.

"You do? Yes, I remember Laurencine saying.... Poor Irene, I fear, was
very deeply in love with him. She had written to Mr. X about
Defourcambault. He showed me the letter--most touching, really most
touching. His answer to it was to com