arried again, that the girl was not happy at home, and had
gone off on a long visit to some friends in the United States. Then for
years I heard nothing. One evening, about ten years after my first
meeting with her, I read in the evening papers the accounts of a
'Supposed Murder at Brighton.' Next morning Riley & Bonner retained me
for the defence. Mr. Riley came to see me, with Mr. Sparling, the
husband of the incriminated lady, and it was in the course of my
consultation with them that I learned who Mrs. Sparling was. I had to
consider whether to take up the case or not; I saw at once it would be a
fight for her life, and I accepted it."

"What a terrible--terrible--position!" murmured Lady Lucy, who was
shading her eyes with her hand.

Sir James took no notice. His trained mind and sense were now wholly
concerned with the presentation of his story.

"The main facts, as I see them, were these. Juliet Wentworth had
married--four years before this date--a scholar and archaeologist whom
she had met at Harvard during her American stay. Mr. Sparling was an
Englishman, and a man of some means who was devoting himself to
exploration in Asia Minor. The marriage was not really happy, though
they were in love with each other. In both there was a temperament
touched with melancholy, and a curious incapacity to accept the common
facts of life. Both hated routine, and were always restless for new
experience. Mrs. Sparling was brilliant in society. She was wonderfully
handsome, in a small slight way; her face was not unlike Miss Curran's
picture of Shelley--the same wildness and splendor in the eyes, the same
delicacy of feature, the same slight excess of breadth across the
cheek-bones, and curly mass of hair. She was odd, wayward,
eccentric--yet always lovable and full of charm. He was a fine creature
in many ways, but utterly unfit for practical life. His mind was always
dreaming of buried treasure--the treasure of the archaeologist: tombs,
vases, gold ornaments, papyri; he had the passion of the excavator
and explorer.

"They came back to England from America shortly after their marriage,
and their child was born. The little girl was three years old when
Sparling went off to dig in a remote part of Asia Minor. His wife
resented his going; but there is no doubt that she was still deeply in
love with him. She herself took a little house at Brighton for the
child's sake. Her small startling beauty soon made her remarked, and he