rie loved
the room more than ever....

When she was come of age, she made it her boudoir. Flowers and silks
and silver lit up its stateliness. Beneath the influence of a grand
piano and the soft-toned cretonnes upon the leather chairs, the
solemnity of the chamber melted into peace. The walls of literature,
once so severe, became a kindly background, wearing a wise, grave smile.

Such comfort, however, as the room extended was to-day lost upon
Valerie. Beyond the fact that it was neither noisome nor full of
uproar, Miss French derived no consolation from an atmosphere to which
she had confidently carried her troubles for at least twenty years.
The truth is, she was sick at heart. There was no health in her. She
had been given a talent and had cast it into the sea. She had stumbled
upon a jewel, more lustrous than any she had dreamed this earth could
render, and of her folly she had flung it into the draught. She had
suspected him who was above suspicion, treated her king like a cur,
unwarrantably whipped from her doors the very finest gentleman in all
the world. What was a thousand times worse, he had completely
vanished. Had she known where he was, she would have gone straight to
him and, kneeling upon her knees, begged his forgiveness. Her pride
was already in tatters, her vanity in rags: could she have found him,
she would have stripped the two mother-naked. In a word, she would
have done anything which it is in the power of a mortal to do to win
back that wonder of happiness which they had together built up. It
must be remembered that Valerie was no fool. She realized wholly that
without Anthony Lyveden Life meant nothing at all. She had very grave
doubts whether it would, without him, ever mean anything again. And
so, to recover her loss, she was quite prepared to pay to the uttermost
farthing. The trouble, was, the wares were no longer for sale; at any
rate, they were not exposed to her eyes. The reflection that, after a
little, they might be offered elsewhere and somebody else secure them,
sent Valerie almost out of her mind. And it might happen any
day--easily. The wares were so very attractive.... Moreover, if their
recovery was to beggar her, by a hideous paradox, failure to repurchase
the wares meant ruin absolute....

When Valerie French had discovered that her jealousy of her lover was
utterly baseless, she had had the sense to make no bones about it, but
to strike her colours at onc