woman's side, and a kind of
incapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs.
Fairmile has been an _intrigante_ from her cradle. Barnes was at one
time deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after the
marriage, and threw them together, by way of getting at the truth, and
he shilly-shallied with the situation, instead of putting a prompt end
to it, as of course he ought to have done. He was honestly fond of his
wife the whole time, and devoted to his home and his child."

"Well, she didn't plead, you say, anything more than 'cruelty' and
'indignities'. The scandal, such as it was, was no doubt part of the
'cruelty'?"

French assented.

"And you suspect that money played a great part in the whole
transaction?"

"I don't _suspect_--the evidence goes a long way beyond that. Mrs.
Barnes bought the show! I am told there are a thousand ways of doing
it."

Penrose smoked and pondered.

"Well, then--what happened? I imagine that by this time Barnes had not
much affection left for his wife?"

"I don't know," said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing was
a great blow to him. He was never passionately in love with her, but he
was very fond of her in his own way--increasingly fond of her--up to
that miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his one
thought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that child
from the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realized
that his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemed
to lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, not
knowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought an
action--a writ of _habeas corpus_, I think--to recover his daughter, as
an English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long----"

"Naturally," said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him--after
the decree."

"So he discovered, poor old fellow! The action was, of course,
obstructed and delayed in every way, by the power of Mrs. Barnes's
millions behind the scenes. His lawyers told him plainly from the
beginning that he had precious little chance. And presently he found
himself the object of a press campaign in some of the yellow papers--all
of it paid for and engineered by his wife. He was held up as the brutal
fortune-hunting Englishman, who had beguiled an American heiress to
marry him, had carried her off to England to live upon her money, had
then i