ry man who loved a
woman wished to believe that she came to him out of the garden of a
convent--out of a roc's egg, like the princess in the Arabian story.

All these things he had experienced in himself, in a shattered romance,
in a disillusioned youth, when he was young like the lad somewhere in
France. Lady Mary would see only broken conventions; but he saw immortal
things, infinitely beyond conventions, awfully broken. He did not move.
He remained like a painted picture.

The girl went on in her soft, slow voice. "You would have disliked Mr.
Meadows, Lady Mary," she said. "You would dislike any American who came
without letters and could not be precisely placed." The girl's voice
grew suddenly firmer. "I don't mean to make it appear better," she said.
"The worst would be nearer the truth. He was just an unknown American
bagman, with a motor car, and a lot of time on his hands--and I picked
him up. But Sir Henry Marquis took a fancy to him."

"I cannot understand Henry," the old woman repeated. "It's
extraordinary."

"It doesn't seem extraordinary to me," said the girl. "Mr. Meadows was
immensely clever, and Sir Henry was like a man with a new toy. The Home
Secretary had just put him in as Chief of the Criminal Investigation
Department. He was full of a lot of new ideas--dactyloscopic bureaus,
photographie mitrique, and scientific methods of crime detection. He
talked about it all the time. I didn't understand half the talk. But
Mr. Meadows was very clever. Sir Henry said he was a charming person.
Anybody who could discuss the whorls of the Galton finger-print tests
was just then a charming person to Sir Henry."

The girl paused a moment, then she went on

"I suppose things had gone so for about a fortnight when your sister,
Lady Monteith, wrote that she had seen Sir Henry with us--Mr. Meadows
and me--in the motor. I have to shatter a pleasant fancy about that
chaperonage! That was the only time Sir Henry was ever with us.

"It came about like this: It was Thursday morning about nine o'clock,
I think, when Sir Henry, popped in at the Ritz. He was full of some
amazing mystery that had turned up at Benton Court, a country house
belonging to the Duke of Dorset, up the Thames beyond Richmond. He
wanted to go there at once. He was fuming because an under secretary had
his motor, and he couldn't catch up with him.

"I told him he could have 'our' motor. He laughed. And I telephoned Mr.
Meadows to come over and tak