as wondering, as I walked, whether I should reveal to my
companion--whose name she had told me was Mrs. Petre--the whole of the
tragic circumstances.

"Is it long ago since you last saw Digby?" I asked her presently, as we
strolled slowly together, and after I had given her my address, and we
had laughed together over my effective disguise.

"Nearly two months," she replied. "I've been in Egypt since the beginning
of November--at Assuan."

"I was there two seasons ago," I said. "How delightful it is in Upper
Egypt--and what a climate in winter! Why, it is said that it has never
rained there for thirty years!"

"I had a most awfully jolly time at the Cataract. It was full of smart
people, for only the suburbs, the demi-monde, and Germans go to the
Riviera nowadays. It's so terribly played out, and the Carnival gaiety is
so childish and artificial."

"It amuses the Cookites," I laughed; "and it puts money in the pockets of
the hotel-keepers of Nice and the neighbourhood."

"Monte is no longer _chic_," she declared. "German women in blouses
predominate; and the really smart world has forsaken the Rooms for Cairo,
Heliopolis, and Assuan. They are too far off and too expensive for the
bearer of Cook's coupons."

I laughed. She spoke with the nonchalant air of the smart woman of the
world, evidently much travelled and cosmopolitan.

But I again turned the conversation to our mutual friend, and strove
with all the diplomatic powers I possessed to induce her to reveal the
name or give me a description of the woman whom she had alleged to be his
enemy--the woman who was under a delusion that he had wronged her lover.
To all my questions, however, she remained dumb. That letter which I had
placed in her hand had, no doubt, put a seal of silence upon her lips.

At one moment she assumed a haughtiness of demeanour which suited her
manner and bearing, at the next she became sympathetic and eager. She
was, I gauged, a woman of strangely complex character. Yet whom could she
be? I knew most, perhaps even all, of Digby's friends, I believed. He
often used to give cosy little tea parties, to which women--many of them
well known in society--came. Towards them he always assumed quite a
paternal attitude, for he was nothing if not a ladies' man.

She seemed very anxious to know in what circumstances he had handed me
the note, and what instructions he had given me. To her questions I
replied quite frankly. Indeed, I repeated his