ver did a greater change
pass over human identity than the one which converted the _beaute de
diable_ of the young wench just of age, who was serving out stimulants
to the Ring, and the Turf, and the men-about-town of the late twenties,
to that of the careworn, washtub-worn, and needle-worn manipulator of
fine linen and broidery, who had been in charge of Dolly and Dave
Wardle since their mother's death three years before. Never was there a
more striking testimony to the power of Man to make a desolation of the
life of Woman, nor a shrewder protest against his right to do so. For
Polly the Barmaid, look you, had done nothing that is condemned by the
orthodox moralities; she had not even flown in the face of her legal
duty to her parents. Was she not twenty-one, and does not that magic
numeral pay all scores?

The Australian gentleman had one card in his pack that was Ace of Trumps
in the game of Betrayal. He only played it when nothing lower would take
the trick. And Polly got little enough advantage from the sanction of
the Altar, her marriage-lines and her wedding-ring, in so far as she
held to the condition precedent of those warrants of respectability,
that she should observe silence about their existence. The only
duplicity of which she had been guilty was the assumption of a false
married name, and that had really seemed to her the only possible
compromise between a definite breach of faith and passive acceptance of
undeserved ill-fame. And when the hideous explanation of Daverill's long
disappearance came about, and _eclaircissement_ seemed inevitable, she
saw the strange discovery she had made of his relation to Mrs. Prichard,
as an aggravation to the embarrassment of acknowledging his past
relation to herself.

There was one feeling only that one might imagine she might have felt,
yet was entirely a stranger to. Might she not have experienced a
longing--a curiosity, at any rate--to set eyes again on the husband who
had deserted her all those long years ago? And this especially in view
of her uncertainty as to how long his absence had been compulsory? As a
matter of fact, her only feeling about this terrible resurrection was
one of shrinking as from a veritable carrion, disinterred from a grave
she had earned her right to forget. Why need this gruesome memory be
raked up to plague her?

The only consolation she could take with her to a probably sleepless
pillow was the last charge of the old prizefighter to h