sly hint to Lady
Ranscomb, then the affair will soon be off, and he'll fall into Louise's
arms. She's really very fond of him."

"She may be, but he takes no notice of her. She told me so the other
day. He's gone to the Riviera--followed Dorise, I suppose," Benton said.

"Yvonne wrote me a few days ago to say that he was there with a friend
of his named Walter Brock. Who's he?"

"Oh! a naval lieutenant-commander who served in the war and was
invalided out after the Battle of Jutland. He got the D.S.O. over the
Falklands affair, and has now some post at the Admiralty. He was
in command of a torpedo boat which sank a German cruiser, and was
afterwards blown up."

"They are both out at Monte Carlo, Yvonne says. And Henfrey is with
Dorise daily," remarked the woman.

"Yvonne is always apprehensive lest young Henfrey should learn the
secret of the old fellow's end," said Benton. "But I don't see how the
truth of the--well, rather ugly affair can ever come out, except by an
indiscretion by one or other of us."

"And that is scarcely likely, Charles, is it?" his hostess laughed
as she pushed across to him a big silver box of cigarettes and then
reclined lazily among her cushions.

"No. It would certainly be a very sensational affair if the newspapers
got hold of the facts, my dear Molly. But don't let us anticipate such a
thing. Fortunately Louise, in her girlish innocence, knows nothing. Old
Henfrey left his money to his son upon certain conditions, one of which
is that Hugh shall marry Louise. And that marriage must, at all hazards,
take place. After that, we care for nothing."

The handsome woman who was rolling a cigarette between her
well-manicured fingers hesitated. Her countenance assumed a strange
look as she reflected. She was far too clever to express any off-hand
opinion. She had outwitted the police of Paris, Brussels, and Rome in
turn. Her whole career had been a criminal one, punctuated by periods of
pretended high respectability--while the funds to support it had lasted.
And upon her hands had been placed Louise Lambert, the child Charles
Benton had adopted ten years before.

"We shall have to exercise a good deal of discretion and caution in
regard to Louise," she declared. "The affair is not at all so plain
sailing as I at first believed."

"No. It is a serious contretemps that you had to leave Paris, Molly,"
agreed her well-dressed visitor. "The young American was a fool, of
course, but I think--