y rate nearly two thousand
miles of sea and land separated us, and I was powerless to aid her,--as
powerless as I had been while I lay in the prison of Peter and Paul. But
there was one thing I could still do; I could guard her name, her fame.
It would have been a desecration to mention her to this man Southbourne.
True, he had proved himself my good and generous friend; but I knew him
for a man of sordid mind, a man devoid of ideals, a man who judged
everything by one standard,--the amount of effective "copy" it would
produce. He would regard her career, even the little of it that was
known to me, as "excellent material" for a sensational serial, which he
would commission one of his hacks to write. No, neither he nor any one
else should ever learn aught of her from me; her name should never, if I
could help it, be touched and smirched by "the world's coarse thumb and
finger."

So I answered his question with a repetition of my first statement.

"I got wind of the meeting, and thought I'd see what it was like."

"Although I had expressly warned you not to do anything of the kind?"

"Well, yes; but still you usually give one a free hand."

"I didn't this time. Was the woman at the meeting?"

"What woman?" I asked.

"The woman whose portrait I showed you,--the portrait Von Eckhardt found
in Carson's pocket. Why didn't you tell me at the time that you knew
her?"

"Simply because I don't know her," I answered, bracing up boldly for the
lie.

"And yet she sat next to Cassavetti at the Savage Club dinner, an hour
or two before he was murdered; and you talked to her rather
confidentially,--under the portico."

I tried bluff once more, though it doesn't come easily to me. I looked
him straight in the face and said deliberately:

"I don't quite understand you, Lord Southbourne. That lady at the Hotel
Cecil was Miss Anne Pendennis, a friend of my cousin, Mrs. Cayley. Do
you know her?"

"Well--no."

"Then who on earth made you think she was the original of that
portrait?"

"Cayley the dramatist; he's your cousin's husband, isn't he? I showed
the portrait to him, and he recognized it at once."

This was rather a facer, and I felt angry with Jim!

"Oh, Jim!" I said carelessly. "He's almost as blind as a mole, and he's
no judge of likenesses. Why he always declares that Gertie Millar's the
living image of Edna May, and he can't tell a portrait of one from the
other without looking at the name (this was quite true