. But her eyes were still her
distinguishing feature, being larger and blacker than before and having
that vivid gaze that looked through and through you and made you feel
that few women and no man in the world would have the power to resist
her.

Her movements were almost noiseless, and as she sank into the chair by
my side there was a certain over-sweetness in the soft succulent tones
of the voice with which she began to tell me what had happened to her
since I had seen her last.

It was a rather painful story. After two or three years in a girls'
college in her own country she had set out with her mother for a long
tour of the European capitals. In Berlin, at what was falsely called a
Charity Ball, she had met a young Russian Count who was understood to be
rich and related to one of the Grand Ducal families. Against the
protests of her father (a shrewd American banker), she had married the
Count, and they had returned to New York, where her mother had social
ambitions.

There they had suffered a serious shock. It turned out that her husband
had deceived them, and that he was really a poor and quite nameless
person, only remotely related to the family he claimed to belong to.

Nevertheless Alma had "won out" at last. By digging deep into her
father's treasury she got rid of her treacherous husband, and going "way
out west," she had been able, in due time, to divorce him.

Since then she had resumed her family name, being known as Madame Lier,
and now she was on her way to Egypt to spend the season at Cairo.

"And you?" she said. "You stayed long at the convent--yes?"

I answered that I had, and then in my fluttering voice (for some of the
old spell of her presence had come sweeping back upon me) I replied one
by one to the questions she asked about the Reverend Mother, the
"Reverend Mother Mildred," Sister Angela and Father Giovanni, not to
speak of myself, whom she had always thought of as "Margaret Mary"
because I had looked so innocent and nun-like.

"And now you are married!" she said. "Married so splendidly, too! We
heard all about it. Mother was so interested. What a lucky girl you are!
Everybody says your husband is so handsome and charming. He is, isn't
he?"

I was doing my utmost to put the best face upon my condition without
betraying the facts or simulating sentiments which I could not feel,
when a boat from the shore pulled up at the ship's side, and my husband
stepped on to the deck.

In his