d times hard in those days,
and actually more than once regretted that he had not remained a stupid,
honest man. He thought that was so simple, and so clever.

"Thus it came about, that, two years later, he had not yet been
reconciled to Sarah's absence. Often and often, in his hours of
distress, he recalled her parting promise, 'You shall see me again
when our fortune is made.' He knew she was quite capable of amassing
millions; but, when she had them, would she still think of him? Where
was she? What could have become of her?

"Sarah was at that time in America.

"That tall, light-haired gentleman, that eminently respectable lady, who
had carried her off, were M. Thomas Elgin and Mrs. Brian. Who were these
people? I have had no time to trace out their antecedents. All I know
is, that they belonged to that class of adventurers whom one sees at
all the watering-places and gambling-resorts,--at Nice, at Monaco, and
during the winter in Italy; swindlers of the highest class, who unite
consummate skill with excessive caution; who are occasionally suspected,
but never found out; and who are frequently indebted to their art
of making themselves agreeable, and even useful to others, to the
carelessness of travellers, and their thorough knowledge of life, for
the acquaintance, or even friendship, of people whom one is astonished
to find in such company.

"Sir Thorn and Mrs. Brian were both English, and, so far, they had
managed to live very pleasantly. But old age was approaching; and they
began to be fearful about the future, when they fell in with Sarah. They
divined her, as she had divined Maxime; and they saw in her an admirable
means to secure a fortune. They did not hesitate, therefore, to offer
her a compact by which she was to be a full partner, although they
themselves had to risk all they possessed,--a capital of some twenty
thousand dollars. You have seen what these respectable people proposed
to make of her,--a snare and a pitfall. They knew very well that her
matchless beauty would catch fools innumerable, and bring in a rich
harvest of thousand-franc-notes.

"The idea was by no means new, M. Champcey, as you seem to think; nor is
the case a rare one.

"In almost all the capitals of Europe, you will find even now some of
these almost sublimely beautiful creatures, who are exhibited in
the great world by cosmopolitan adventurers. They have six or seven
years,--eighteen to twenty-five,--during which, their be