nsulted her by scandalous flirtations with a lady to whom he had
formerly been engaged, had shown her constant rudeness and unkindness,
and had finally, in the course of a quarrel, knocked her down,
inflicting shock and injury from which she had suffered ever since. Mrs.
Barnes had happily freed herself from him, but he was now trying to
bully her through the child--had, it was said, threatened to carry off
the little girl by violence. Mrs. Barnes went in terror of him. America,
however, would know how to protect both the mother and the child! You
can imagine the kind of thing. Well, very soon Roger began to find
himself a marked man in hotels, followed in the streets, persecuted by
interviewers; and the stream of lies that found its way even into the
respectable newspapers about him, his former life, his habits, etc., is
simply incredible! Unfortunately, he gave some handle----"

French paused a moment.

"Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours."

French rose and began to pace the room.

"It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly," he said at last. "The
night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--her
pretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitement
and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a
thing he had never done in his life before. But----"

"He has often done it since?"

French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis.
"Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of
hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off."

"Well, what came of his action?"

"Nothing--so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it.
Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About three
months ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. He
got word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there with
a couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, and
when he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she had
been removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he got
back to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he was
struck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him.
You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such a
story! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was that
year he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from the
pavilion?"