her father's will, a large portion of her fortune would come to him....
Were you going to speak? No? Very well. Things got worse and worse.
Freeman neglected business and everything else, became a nuisance. He
never offered to take me to see the lady, and I did not suggest it, did
not even know where she lived. What galled me most in the matter was
that Freeman had been for years attentive to a cousin of mine, Clare
Hazard, almost my sister, indeed, since she had been brought up in
my father's house; and I knew that from a child she had adored him.
However, these things seldom work out according to the law of Nature,
and so I chewed the cud of dissatisfaction and kept the thing from my
cousin as long as I could. About the time matters seemed at a crisis I
was taken ill, and was ordered south. My mother and Freeman accompanied
me as far as Paris. Here Freeman left me to return to England, and in
the Cafe Voisin, at Paris--yes, mark that--we had our farewell. I have
never seen him since. While in Italy I was brought to death's door by my
illness; and when I got up, Clare told me that Freeman was married and
had gone to Egypt. She, poor girl, bore it well. I was savage, but it
was too late. I was ordered to go to the South Seas, at least to take
a long sea-voyage; and though I could not well afford it I started for
Australia. On my way out I stopped off at Port Said to try and find
Freeman in Egypt, but failed. I heard of him at Cairo, and learned also
that his wife's brother had joined them. Two years passed, and then I
got a letter from an old friend, saying that Freeman's wife had eloped
with a Frenchman. Another year, and then came a letter from Freeman
himself, saying that his wife was dead; that he had identified her body
in the Morgue at Paris--found drowned, and all that. He believed that
remorse had driven her to suicide. But he had no trace of the brother,
no trace of the villain whom he had scoured Europe and America over to
find. Again, another three years, and now he writes me that he is going
to be married to Clare Hazard on the twenty sixth of this month. With
that information came this portrait. I tell you all, M. Barre, because I
feel that this woman Gabrielle has some connection with the past life of
my friend Luke Freeman. She recognised the face, and you saw the effect.
Now will you tell me what you know about her?"

Shorland had been much more communicative than was his custom. But
he knew men. This man