Bolivian order tied across his
false shirt front. Don Quebrado d'Acunha was a practiced hand at
seduction and Yae became one of his victims soon after her seventeenth
birthday, and just ten days before her admirer sailed away to rejoin
his legitimate spouse in Guayaquil. The engagement with Hoskin still
lingered on; but the young man, who adored her was haggard and pale.
Yae had a new follower, a teacher of English in a Japanese school, who
recited beautifully and wrote poetry about her.

Then Baroness Miyazaki judged that her time was ripe. She summoned
young Hoskin into her dowager presence, and, with a manner heavily
maternal, she warned him against the lightness of his fiancee. When he
refused to believe evil of her she produced a pathetic letter full
of half-confessions, which the girl herself had written to her in
a moment of expansion. A week later the young man's body was washed
ashore near Yokohama.

Yae was sorry to hear of the accident; but she had long ceased to be
interested in Hoskin, the reticence of whose passion had seemed like
a touch of ice to her fevered nerves. But this was Baroness Miyazaki's
opportunity to discredit Yae, to crush her rival out of serious
competition, and to degrade her to the _demi-monde_. It was done
promptly and ruthlessly; for the Baroness's gossip carried weight
throughout the diplomatic, professional and missionary circles, even
where her person was held in ridicule. The facts of Hoskin's suicide
became known. Nice women dropped Yae entirely; and bad men ran after
her with redoubled zest. Yae did not realize her ostracism.

The Smith's dances next winter became so many competitions for the
daughter's corruption, and were rendered brilliant by the presence
of several of the young officers attached to the British Embassy, who
made the running, and finally monopolized the prize.

Next year the Smiths acquired a motor-car which soon became Yae's
special perquisite. She would disappear for whole days and nights.
None of her family could restrain her. Her answer to all remonstrances
was:

"You do what you want; I do what I want."

That summer two English officers whom she especially favoured fought a
duel with pistols--for her beauty or for her honour. The exact motive
remained unknown. One was seriously wounded; and both of them had to
leave the country.

Yae was grieved by this sudden loss of both her lovers. It left her
in a condition of double widowhood from which she