to Miss Power, Grand Hotel, Genoa.

'Have lost all at Monte Carlo. Have learnt that Captain D. S. returns
here to-morrow. Please send me one hundred pounds by him, and save
me from disgrace. Will await him at eleven o'clock and four, on the
Pont-Neuf.'

V.

Five hours after the despatch of that telegram Captain De Stancy was
rattling along the coast railway of the Riviera from Genoa to Nice.
He was returning to England by way of Marseilles; but before turning
northwards he had engaged to perform on Miss Power's account a peculiar
and somewhat disagreeable duty. This was to place in Somerset's hands a
hundred and twenty-five napoleons which had been demanded from her by a
message in Somerset's name. The money was in his pocket--all in gold,
in a canvas bag, tied up by Paula's own hands, which he had observed to
tremble as she tied it.

As he leaned in the corner of the carriage he was thinking over the
events of the morning which had culminated in that liberal response. At
ten o'clock, before he had gone out from the hotel where he had taken up
his quarters, which was not the same as the one patronized by Paula
and her friends, he had been summoned to her presence in a manner
so unexpected as to imply that something serious was in question.
On entering her room he had been struck by the absence of that
saucy independence usually apparent in her bearing towards him,
notwithstanding the persistency with which he had hovered near her for
the previous month, and gradually, by the position of his sister, and
the favour of Paula's uncle in intercepting one of Somerset's letters
and several of his telegrams, established himself as an intimate member
of the travelling party. His entry, however, this time as always,
had had the effect of a tonic, and it was quite with her customary
self-possession that she had told him of the object of her message.

'You think of returning to Nice this afternoon?' she inquired.

De Stancy informed her that such was his intention, and asked if he
could do anything for her there.

Then, he remembered, she had hesitated. 'I have received a telegram,'
she said at length; and so she allowed to escape her bit by bit the
information that her architect, whose name she seemed reluctant to
utter, had travelled from England to Nice that week, partly to consult
her, partly for a holiday trip; that he had gone on to Monte Carlo, had
there lost his money and got into difficulties, and had appealed