h more than she was able to tell him.

He listened with attention, however, and only by gradual stages
deflected conversation to the affairs that had brought him.
Presently he indicated an aspect of her own position arising from
his words on the previous night.

"Did it ever strike you that it was a bold thing to marry within
little more than nine months of your first husband's disappearance,
Mrs. Doria?" he asked.

"It did not; but I shivered when I heard you talking yesterday. And
call me 'Jenny,' not 'Mrs. Doria,' Mr. Ganns."

"Love has always been very impatient of law"; he declared, "but the
fact is that unless proof of an exceptional character can be
submitted, the English law is not prepared to say of any man that he
is dead until seven years have passed from the last record of him
among the living. Now there is rather a serious difference between
seven years and nine months, Jenny."

"Looking back I seem to see nothing but a long nightmare. 'Nine
months!' It was a century. Don't think that I didn't love my first
husband; I adored him and I adore his memory; but the loneliness and
the sudden magic of this man. Besides all that, surely none could
question the hideous proofs of what happened? I accepted Michael's
death as a fact which need not enter the calculation. My God! Why
did not somebody hint to me that I was doing wrong to wed?"

"Did anybody have a chance?"

She looked at him with a face full of unhappiness.

"You are right. I was possessed. I made a terrible mistake; but do
not fear that I have escaped the punishment."

He guessed her meaning and led her away from the subject of her
husband.

"Tell me, if it won't hurt you too much, a little about Michael
Pendean."

But she appeared not to hear him. Her thoughts were concerned
entirely with herself and her present situation.

"I can trust you. You are wise and know life. I have not married a
man, but a devil!"

Her hands clenched and he saw a flash of her teeth in the gloom of
the silent chamber.

He took snuff and listened, while the unfortunate woman raved of her
error.

"I hate him. I loathe him," she cried, and heaped hard words on the
head of the debonair Giuseppe. She broke off presently panted, and
then subsided in tears.

Peter studied her very carefully, yet, for the moment, showed no
great sympathy. His answer was tonic rather than sedative.

"You must keep your nerve and be patient," he said. "Even Italy's a
free countr