he strong impulses that
moved her valorous soul.

Mrs. Talcott wore a small, round, black straw hat trimmed with a black
bow. It was the shape that she had worn for years; it was unaffected by
the weather and indifferent to the shifting of fashion. Her neck-gear
was the one invariable with her in the daytime; a collar of lawn turned
down over a black silk stock. About her shoulders was a black cloth
cape. Sitting there in her hansom, she looked very old, and she looked
also very national and typical; the adventurous, indomitable old girl of
America, bent on seeing all that there was to see, emerged for the first
time in her life from her provinces, and carrying, it might have been, a
Baedeker under her arm.

It was many years since Mrs. Talcott had passed beyond the need of
Baedekers, and her provinces were a distant memory; yet she, too, was
engaged, like the old American girl, in the final adventure of her life.
She did not know, as she drove along in her hansom with her shabby
little box on the roof, whether she were ever to see Les Solitudes
again.

"Carry it right up," she said to the porter at the mansions in St.
James's when she arrived there. "I've come for the night, I expect."

The porter had told her that Mr. Jardine had come in. And he looked at
Mrs. Talcott curiously.

At the door of Gregory's flat Mrs. Talcott encountered a check. Barker,
mournful and low-toned as an undertaker, informed her firmly that Mr.
Jardine was seeing nobody. He fixed an astonished eye upon Mrs.
Talcott's box which was being taken from the lift.

"That's all right," said Mrs. Talcott. "Mr. Jardine'll see me. You tell
him that Mrs. Talcott is here."

She had walked past Barker into the hall and her box was placed beside
her.

Barker was very much disconcerted, yet he felt Mrs. Talcott to be a
person of weight. He ushered her into the drawing-room.

In the late sunlight it was as gay and as crisp as ever, but for the
lack of flowers, and the Bouddha still sat presiding in his golden
niche.

"Mr. Jardine is in the smoking-room, Madam," said Barker, and, gauging
still further the peculiar significance of this guest whose name he now
recovered as one familiar to him on letters, he added in a low voice:
"He has not used this room since Mrs. Jardine left us."

"Is that so?" said Mrs. Talcott gravely. "Well, you go and bring him
here right away."

Mrs. Talcott stood in the centre of the room when Barker had gone and
gazed