be reliable. You might arrange
matters with him."

Now, above and beyond every other characteristic, Curtis was
fair-minded. He read the girl's letter once in order to learn what had
happened and why she had gone: then he reread it critically, word for
word, trying to distil from its disjointed phrases "that essence of
truth" which Hermione had spoken of. Evidently, she had determined to
keep her words within the bare walls of necessity. The note had a
jerkiness of style that was certainly absent from her speech, and the
fact argued that she was compelling herself to write with restraint.
She was brimming over with reproach, grief-stricken, and miserable, and
unquestionably shocked beyond measure, but she had forced the
reflection: "I have no real claim on this man, nor wrong to lay at his
door, and, although he has deceived me, I am under heavy obligation to
him, so I must neither condemn nor reproach, but say nothing that goes
beyond a temperate explanation of my action."

The signature itself was eloquent of the conflict which raged in her
troubled brain while the pen was framing those formal sentences.
Well-bred young ladies do not sign themselves by their Christian names,
_tout court_, in notes written to young gentlemen of an evening's
acquaintance. Yet, what was she to do? "Hermione Beauregard
Grandison" had gone beyond recovery with the marriage ceremony, but
"Hermione Curtis" was almost ludicrous, considering the text of this,
the first note she had written to her "husband."

It was only one side of Curtis's self-reliant nature which analyzed,
and criticised, and weighed matters with such judicial calm. There was
another which brought a hard glint into his eyes, and caused a hand
which gripped the molded back of a lightly-built chair to exert a force
of which he was unconscious until the mahogany rail snapped.

Then he remembered Steingall, and his enigmatical inquiries, and turned
to the telephone.

At sound of his voice, the detective cleared away any doubt as to the
reason which inspired those vague questions.

"Lady Hermione has gone, has she?" he said sympathetically. "I thought
as much. There was no use in worrying you about it sooner, but I was
told that the Earl and Schmidt had visited her, and that she and the
maid had left the hotel in a taxi a few minutes after the departure of
the visitors. Will you take my advice?"

"What is it?"

"You ought to have said 'Yes' at once. Go to