n he brought to their rooms were, though well-dressed, of a very
different class to those with whom she had been in the habit of
associating in London.

But the girl never complained. She loved Ralph with a fond, silent
passion, and even the poor circumstances in which already, after ten
months of married life, she now found herself, did not trouble her so
long as her husband treated her with consideration.

As regards Adolphe, she rather avoided than encouraged him. Her woman's
keenness of observation showed her that he sympathised with her and
admired her--in fact, that he was deeply in love with her, though he
strenuously endeavoured not to betray his affection.

Thus, within a year of the tragic end of Dick Harborne, Jean found
herself living in a second-floor flat in a secluded house in the
Boulogne quarter, not far from the Seine, a poor, working-class
neighbourhood. The rooms, four in number, were furnished in the usual
cheap and gaudy French style, the floor of bare, varnished boards, save
where strips of Japanese matting were placed.

On that warm August evening, Jean, in a plain, neatly-made black dress,
with a little white collar of Swiss embroidery, and wearing a little
apron of spotted print--for their circumstances did not permit the
keeping of a "bonne"--was seated in her small living-room, sewing, and
awaiting the return of her husband.

She had, alas! met with sad disillusionment. Instead of the happy,
affluent circumstances which she had fondly imagined would be hers, she
had found herself sinking lower and lower. Her parents were now both
dead, and she had no one in whom to confide her suspicions or fears.
Besides, day after day, Ralph went out in the morning after his
_cafe-au-lait_, and only returned at eight o'clock to eat the dinner
which she prepared--alas! often to grumble at it. Slowly--ah! so very
slowly--the hideousness and mockery of her marriage was being forced
upon her.

Gradually, as she sat at the open window waiting his coming, and annoyed
because the evening meal which she had so carefully cooked was spoilt by
his tardiness, the dusk faded and darkness crept on.

She felt stifled, and longed again for the fresh air of the country.
Before her, as she sat with her hands idle in her lap, there arose
memories of that warm afternoon when, in that charming little fishing
village in England, she had met her good friend Richard Harborne, the
man who that very same evening fell beneath