hed.

"I am only human, you know," she went on. "Every one told me that Wenham
was a millionaire, too. See how much I have benefited by it. I am almost
penniless, I do not know whether he is dead or alive, I do not know what
to do to get some money. Was Wenham very rich, Jerry?"

The man laughed.

"Oh, he was very rich indeed!" he assured her. "It is terrible that you
should be left like this. We will talk about it together presently, you
and I. In the meantime, you must let me be your banker."

"Dear Jerry," she whispered, "you were always generous."

"You have not spoken of the little prude--dear Miss Beatrice," he
reminded her suddenly.

Elizabeth sighed.

"Beatrice was a great trial from the first," she declared. "You know how
she disliked you both--she was scarcely even civil to Wenham, and she
would never have come to Europe with us if father hadn't insisted upon
it. We took her down to Cornwall with us and there she became absolutely
insupportable. She was always interfering between Wenham and me and
imagining the most absurd things. One day she left us without a word of
warning. I have never seen her since."

The man stared gloomily into his plate.

"She was a queer little thing," he muttered. "She was good, and she
seemed to like being good."

Elizabeth laughed, not quite pleasantly.

"You speak as though the rest of us," she remarked, "were qualified to
take orders in wickedness."

He helped himself to more brandy.

"Think back," he said. "Think of those days in New York, the life we
led, the wild things we did week after week, month after month, the same
eternal round of turning night into day, of struggling everywhere to
find new pleasures, pulling vice to pieces like children trying to find
the inside of their playthings."

"I don't like your mood in the least," she interrupted.

He drummed for a moment upon the tablecloth with his fingers.

"We were talking of Beatrice. You don't even know where she is now,
then?"

"I have no idea," Elizabeth declared.

"She was with you for long in Cornwall?" he asked.

Elizabeth toyed with her wineglass for a minute.

"She was there about a month," she admitted.

"And she didn't approve of the way you and Wenham behaved?" he demanded.

"Apparently not. She left us, anyway. She didn't understand Wenham in
the least. I shouldn't be surprised," Elizabeth went on, "to hear that
she was a hospital nurse, or learning typing, or a clerk in an office.