d on the day
he fled. The bitter revulsion of feeling and astonishment was evidently
visible in his face, for she, too, drew back for a moment as they
separated. But she had evidently been prepared, if not pathetically
inured to such experiences. She dropped into a chair again with a dry
laugh, and a hard metallic voice, as she said,--

"Well, it's YOU, anyway--and you can't get out of it."

As he still stared at her, in her inconsistent finery, draggled and
wet by the storm, at her limp ribbons and ostentatious jewelry, she
continued, in the same hard voice,--

"I thought I spotted you once or twice before; but you took no notice of
me, and I reckoned I was mistaken. But this afternoon at the Temple of
Music"--

"Where?" said James Smith harshly.

"At the Temple--the San Francisco Troupe performance--where you brushed
by me, and I heard your voice saying, 'Beg pardon!' I says, 'That's Jim
Farendell.'"

"Farendell!" burst out James Smith, half in simulated astonishment, half
in real alarm.

"Well! Smith, then, if you like better," said the woman impatiently;
"though it's about the sickest and most played-out dodge of a name you
could have pitched upon. James Smith, Don Diego Smith!" she repeated,
with a hysteric laugh. "Why, it beats the nigger minstrels all hollow!
Well, when I saw you there, I said, 'That's Jim Farendell, or his twin
brother;' I didn't say 'his ghost,' mind you; for, from the beginning,
even before I knew it all, I never took any stock in that fool yarn
about your burnt bones being found in your office."

"Knew all, knew what?" demanded the man, with a bravado which he
nevertheless felt was hopeless.

She rose, crossed the room, and, standing before him, placed one hand
upon her hip as she looked at him with half-pitying effrontery.

"Look here, Jim," she began slowly, "do you know what you're doing?
Well, you're making me tired!" In spite of himself, a half-superstitious
thrill went through him as her words and attitude recalled the dead
Scranton. "Do you suppose that I don't know that you ran away the night
of the fire? Do you suppose that I don't know that you were next to
ruined that night, and that you took that opportunity of skedaddling
out of the country with all the money you had left, and leaving folks
to imagine you were burnt up with the books you had falsified and the
accounts you had doctored! It was a mean thing for you to do to me, Jim,
for I loved you then, and would have