tened their projected journey and, making a circuit, picked
up the motor-car--a joy and wonder to Liosha. She wanted to drive
it--over the rutted wagon-tracks that pass for roads in Albania--and
such was Prescott's infatuation that he would have allowed her to do so.
But Jaffery sat an immovable mountain of flesh at the wheel and brought
them safely to Scutari. There arrangements were made for the marriage
before the British Vice-Consul. On the morning of the ceremony Prescott
fell ill. The ceremony was, however, performed. Towards evening he was
in high fever. The next morning typhoid declared itself. In two or three
days he was dead. He had made a will leaving everything to his wife,
with Jaffery as sole executor and trustee.

This sorry ending of poor Prescott's romance--I never knew him, but
shall always think of him as a swift and vehement spirit--was told very
huskily by Jaffery beneath the wistaria arbour. Tears rolled down
Barbara's and Doria's cheeks. My wife's sympathetic little hand slid
into Liosha's. With her other hand Liosha fondled it. I am sure it was
rather gratitude for this little feminine act than poignant emotion that
moistened Liosha's beautiful eyes.

"I haven't had much luck, have I?"

"No, my poor dear, you haven't," cried Barbara in a gush of kindness.

In the course of a few weeks to have one's affianced husband murdered
and one's legal though nominal husband spirited away by disease, seemed
in the eyes of my gentle wife to transcend all records of human tragedy.
Very soon afterwards she made a pretext for taking Liosha away from us,
and I had the extraordinary experience of seeing my proud little
Barbara, who loathes the caressive insincerities prevalent among women,
cross the lawn with her arm around Liosha's waist.

The rest of the bare bones of the story I have already told you.
Jaffery, after burying his poor comrade, took ship with Liosha and went
to Cettinje, where he entrusted her to the care of old friends of his,
the Austrian Consul and his wife, and made her known as the widow of
Prescott of Reuter's to the British diplomatic authorities. Then having
his work to do, he started forth again, a heavy-hearted adventurer, and,
when it was over, he picked up Liosha, for whom Frau von Hagen had
managed to procure a stock of more or less civilised raiment, and
brought her to London to make good her claim, under Prescott's will, to
her dead husband's fortune.

Now this is Jaffery all