home
from school in Germany, and once I foolishly allowed him to kiss me.
From that moment he became filled with a mad passion for me, and though
I induced my father to dismiss him, he haunted me. Then I met Charlie
Whitaker, and fancied that I loved him. Every girl is anxious to secure
a husband. He was rich, kind, good-looking, and all that was eligible,
save that he was not of the nobility, and for that reason he knew that
my father would discountenance him. He, however, induced me to take a
step that I afterwards bitterly regretted. I met him one morning at the
registry office at Kensington, and we were married. We lunched together
at the Savoy, and then I drove home again. That very afternoon the crash
came, and on that same night he was compelled to leave England for the
Continent, a ruined man."

"He must have known of the impending crisis," I remarked simply.

"I fear he did," was her reply. "But it was only a week later that you,
who had known me so long, spoke to me. You told me of your love, alas!
too late. What could I reply? What irony of Fate!"

"Yes, yes. I see. You could not tell me the truth."

"No. For several reasons. I loved you, yet I knew that if you were in
ignorance you would remain Charlie's friend. Ah! you cannot know the
awful suspense, and the thousand and one subterfuges I had to adopt.
Murri, who was still in London, employed at the Carlton Club, continued
to pester me with his passionate letters--the letters of an imbecile.
Somehow, a year later, he discovered our marriage, by the official
record, I think, and then he met me in secret one day and vowed a
terrible vengeance."

"His threat he carried out," I said; "and you, my darling, are at last
free."

Her head fell upon my shoulder, her chiffons rose and fell again, and
our lips met in a long, hot, passionate caress, by which I knew that she
was still mine--still my own sweet love.

But I was merely a chauffeur--and an adventurer.

That is why I have not married.

CHAPTER X

THE LADY IN A HURRY

"Ah! your London is such a strange place. So dull, so triste--so very
damp and foggy."

"Not always, mademoiselle," I replied. "You have been there in winter.
You should go in June. In the season it is as pleasant as anywhere else
in the world."

"I have no desire to return. And yet----"

"Well?"

"And yet I have decided to go straight to Boulogne, and across the
Channel."

I had met Julie Rosier under curious circu