nflexible; that the iron bars of a woman's resolve may bar
one out, even as prison doors may bar him in. He found the Lady
Catharine unshakeable in her resolve not to see him or speak with him.
Whereat he raged, expostulated by post, waited, waylaid, and so at
length gained an interview, which taught him many things.

He found the Lady Catharine Knollys changed from a light-hearted girl to
a maiden tall, grave, reserved and sad, offering no reproaches,
listening to no protestations. Told of Sir Arthur Pembroke's horrible
death, she wept with tears which his survivor envied. Told at length of
the little child, she sat wide-eyed and silent. Approached with words of
remorse, with expostulations, promises, she shrank back in absolute
horror, trembling, so that in very pity the wretched young man left her
and found his way out into a world suddenly grown old and gray.

After this dismissal, Law for many months saw nothing, heard nothing of
this woman whom he had wronged, even as he received no sign from the
woman who had forsaken him over seas. He remained away as long as might
be, until his violent nature, geyser-like, gathered inner storm and fury
by repression, and broke away in wild eruption.

Once more he sought the presence of the woman whose face haunted his
soul, and once more he met ice and adamant stronger than his own fires.
Beaten, he fled from London and from England, seeking still, after the
ancient and ineffective fashion of man, to forget, though he himself had
confessed the lesson that man can not escape himself, but takes his own
hell with him wherever he goes.

Rejected, as he was now, by the new ministry of England, none the less
every capital of Europe came presently to know John Law, gambler,
student and financier. Before every ruler on the continent he laid his
system of financial revolution, and one by one they smiled, or shrugged,
or scoffed at him. Baffled once more in his dearest purpose, he took
again to play, play in such colossal and audacious form as never yet had
been seen even in the gayest courts of a time when gaming was a vice to
be called national. No hazard was too great for him, no success and no
reverse sufficiently keen to cause him any apparent concern. There was
no risk sharp enough to deaden the gnawing in his soul, no excitement
strong enough to wipe away from his mind the black panorama of his past.

He won princely fortunes and cast them away again. With the figure and
the a