mystery might make him
more interesting in my eyes. Believing that we had met again, Mrs.
Beckett supposed that he had explained this to me. But of course it was
all new, and when she came to the reason why Jim Wyndham had never come
back, I thought for a moment I should faint. He was taken ill in Paris,
three days after we parted, with typhoid fever; and though it was never
a desperate case--owing to his strong constitution--he was delirious for
weeks. Two months passed before he was well enough to look for me, and
by that time all trace of us was lost. Brian and I had gone to England
long before. Jim's friend--the one with whom he had the bet--wired to
the Becketts that he was ill, but not dangerously, and they weren't to
come over to France. It was only when he reached home that they knew how
serious the trouble had been.

While I was listening, learning that Jim had really loved me, and
searched for me, it seemed that I had a right to him after all: that I
was an honest girl, hearing news of her own man, from his own people. It
was only when Mr. Beckett began to draw me out, with a quite pathetic
shyness, on the subject of our worldly resources that I was brought up
short again, against the dark wall of my deceit. It _should_ have been
exquisite, it _was_ heartbreaking, to see how he feared to hurt my
feelings with some offer of help from his abundance. "Hurt my feelings!"
And it was with the sole intention of "working" them for money that I'd
written to the Becketts.

That looks horrible in black and white, doesn't it, Padre? But I won't
try to hide my motives behind a dainty screen, from your eyes or mine. I
had wanted and meant to get as much as I could for Brian and myself out
of Jim Beckett's father and mother. And now, when I was on the way to
obtain my object, more easily than I had expected--now, when I saw the
kind of people they were--now, when I knew that to Jim Wyndham I had
been an ideal, "his dream come true." I saw my own face as in a mirror.
It was like the sly, mean face of a serpent disguised as a woman.

I remember once saying to you, Padre, when you had read aloud "The
Idylls of the King" to Brian and me as children, that Vivien was the
worst _cad_ I ever heard of since the beginning of the world! I haven't
changed my mind about her since, except that I give her second place. I
am in the first.

I suppose, when I first pictured the Becketts (if I stopped to picture
them at all) I imagined th