to her
to help him out of them by the immediate advance of some ready cash. It
was a sad case, an unexpected case, she murmured, with her eyes fixed on
the window. Indeed she could not comprehend it.

To De Stancy there appeared nothing so very extraordinary in Somerset's
apparent fiasco, except in so far as that he should have applied to
Paula for relief from his distresses instead of elsewhere. It was a
self-humiliation which a lover would have avoided at all costs, he
thought. Yet after a momentary reflection on his theory of Somerset's
character, it seemed sufficiently natural that he should lean
persistently on Paula, if only with a view of keeping himself linked to
her memory, without thinking too profoundly of his own dignity. That
the esteem in which she had held Somerset up to that hour suffered
a tremendous blow by his apparent scrape was clearly visible in her,
reticent as she was; and De Stancy, while pitying Somerset, thanked him
in his mind for having gratuitously given a rival an advantage which
that rival's attentions had never been able to gain of themselves.

After a little further conversation she had said: 'Since you are to be
my messenger, I must tell you that I have decided to send the hundred
pounds asked for, and you will please to deliver them into no hands but
his own.' A curious little blush crept over her sobered face--perhaps it
was a blush of shame at the conduct of the young man in whom she had
of late been suspiciously interested--as she added, 'He will be on the
Pont-Neuf at four this afternoon and again at eleven tomorrow. Can you
meet him there?'

'Certainly,' De Stancy replied.

She then asked him, rather anxiously, how he could account for Mr.
Somerset knowing that he, Captain De Stancy, was about to return to
Nice?

De Stancy informed her that he left word at the hotel of his intention
to return, which was quite true; moreover, there did not lurk in his
mind at the moment of speaking the faintest suspicion that Somerset had
seen Dare.

She then tied the bag and handed it to him, leaving him with a serene
and impenetrable bearing, which he hoped for his own sake meant an
acquired indifference to Somerset and his fortunes. Her sending the
architect a sum of money which she could easily spare might be set
down to natural generosity towards a man with whom she was artistically
co-operating for the improvement of her home.

She came back to him again for a moment. 'Could you po