she is?" said Buntingford quietly.

"I understand that she tells Mr. Alcott that she was Mrs. Philip Bliss,
that she left you fifteen years ago, and that you believed her dead?"

He saw Buntingford shrink.

"At times I did--yes, at times I did--but we won't go into that. Is she
ill--really ill?"

Ramsay spoke deliberately, after a minute's thought:

"Yes, she is probably very ill. The heart is certainly in a dangerous
state. I thought she would have slipped away this morning, when they
called me in--the collapse was so serious. She is not a strong woman, and
she had a bad attack of influenza last week. Then she was out all last
night, wandering about, evidently in a state of great excitement. It was
as bad a fainting fit as I have ever seen."

"It would be impossible to move her?"

"For a day or two certainly. She keeps worrying about a boy--apparently
her own boy?"

"I will see to that."

Ramsay hesitated a moment and then said--"What are we to call her? It
will not be possible, I imagine, to keep her presence here altogether a
secret. She called herself, in talking to Miss Alcott, Madame Melegrani."

"Why not? As to explaining her, I hardly know what to say."

Buntingford put his hand across his eyes; the look of weariness, of
perplexity, intensified ten-fold.

"An acquaintance of yours in Italy, come to ask you for help?"
suggested Ramsay.

Buntingford withdrew his hand.

"No!" he said with decision. "Better tell the truth! She was my wife. She
left me, as she has told the Alcotts, and took steps eleven years ago to
make me believe her dead. And up to seven years ago, she passed as the
wife of a man whom I knew by the name of Sigismondo Rocca. When the
announcement of her death appeared, I set enquiries on foot at once, with
no result. Latterly, I have thought it must be true; but I have never
been quite certain. She has reappeared now, it seems, partly because she
has no resources, and partly in order to restore to me my son."

"Your son!" said Ramsay, startled.

"She tells me that a boy was born after she left me, and that I am the
father. All that I must verify. No need to say anything whatever about
that yet. Her main purpose, no doubt, was to ask for pecuniary
assistance, in order to go to America. In return she will furnish my
lawyers with all the evidence necessary for my divorce from her."

Ramsay slowly shook his head.

"I doubt whether she will ever get to America. She has worn herself