e's
head, as though Nature, evaded heretofore, would not be denied. But the
weird fortune that had attended her was in my mind.

Married to Senor Barras out of the door of a convent, carried to Rio
de Janeiro to an unbearable life, escaping with a remnant of her
inheritance in English bank-notes, she arrives here to visit the one,
old, persisting friend, Mrs. Jordan, and finds her dead! And what seemed
strange, incredible beyond belief, was that this creature Barras had
thought only of her fortune which he had depleted in two years to the
something less than twenty thousand pounds which I had exchanged for her
into our money; a mere fragment of her great inheritance.

I had listened to the story entranced with the alluring teller of it;
wondering as I now wondered, on the road to the village, how anything
pretending to be man could think of money when she was before his eye.

What could he buy with money that equaled her! And yet this curious
jackal had seen in her only the key to a strong-box. There was behind
it, in explanation, shadowed out, the glamor of an empire that Senor
Barras would set up with the millions in his country of revolutions, and
the enthusiasms of a foolish mother.

And yet the jackal and this wreckage had not touched her. There was no
stain, no crumpled leaf. She was a fresh wonder, even after this, out of
a chrysalis. It was this amazing newness, this virginity of blossom from
which one could not escape.

The word in my reflection brought me up. How had she escaped from
Barras?

I had more than once in my reflections pivoted on the word.

The great hotel was very nearly deserted when I entered.

There was the glow of a cigar where some one smoked, at the end of the
long porch. Within, there was only a sleepy clerk.

Madame Barras had not arrived... he was quite sure; she had gone out to
dinner somewhere and had not come in!

I was profoundly concerned. But I took a moment to reflect before
deciding what to do.

I stepped outside and there, coming up from the shadow of the porch, I
met Sir Henry Marquis.

It was chance at its extreme of favor. If I had been given the
selection, in all the world, I should have asked for Sir Henry Marquis
at that decisive moment.

The relief I felt made my words extravagant.

"Marquis!" I cried. "You here!"

"Ah, Winthrop," he said, in his drawling Oxford voice, "what have you
done with Madame Barras; I was waiting for her?"

I told him, in a wo