athered strength, and in a low but ringing voice, he added: "But I say
this. You have told me, M. Hanaud, of women who looked innocent and
were guilty. But you know also of women and girls who can live
untainted and unspoilt amidst surroundings which are suspicious."

Hanaud listened, but he neither agreed nor denied. He took up a second
slip of paper.

"I shall tell you something now of Mme. Dauvray," he said. "We will not
take up her early history. It might not be edifying and, poor woman,
she is dead. Let us not go back beyond her marriage seventeen years ago
to a wealthy manufacturer of Nancy, whom she had met in Paris. Seven
years ago M. Dauvray died, leaving his widow a very rich woman. She had
a passion for jewellery, which she was now able to gratify. She
collected jewels. A famous necklace, a well-known stone--she was not,
as you say, happy till she got it. She had a fortune in precious
stones--oh, but a large fortune! By the ostentation of her jewels she
paraded her wealth here, at Monte Carlo, in Paris. Besides that, she
was kind-hearted and most impressionable. Finally, she was, like so
many of her class, superstitious to the degree of folly."

Suddenly Mr. Ricardo started in his chair. Superstitious! The word was
a sudden light upon his darkness. Now he knew what had perplexed him
during the last two days. Clearly--too clearly--he remembered where he
had seen Celia Harland, and when. A picture rose before his eyes, and
it seemed to strengthen like a film in a developing-dish as Hanaud
continued:

"Very well! take Mme. Dauvray as we find her--rich, ostentatious,
easily taken by a new face, generous, and foolishly superstitious--and
you have in her a living provocation to every rogue. By a hundred
instances she proclaimed herself a dupe. She threw down a challenge to
every criminal to come and rob her. For seven years Helene Vauquier
stands at her elbow and protects her from serious trouble. Suddenly
there is added to her--your young friend, and she is robbed and
murdered. And, follow this, M. Wethermill, our thieves are, I think,
more brutal to their victims than is the case with you."

Wethermill shut his eyes in a spasm of pain and the pallor of his face
increased.

"Suppose that Celia were one of the victims?" he cried in a stifled
voice.

Hanaud glanced at him with a look of commiseration.

"That perhaps we shall see," he said. "But what I meant was this. A
stranger like Mlle. Celie might be th