o the
other.

"To see you to your carriage, Mrs. Howard," said the Mayor, in a voice
that had become somewhat deeper.

"Through the whole building? Past all the people in the hall and on
the stairs? Why, I passed Dan Stewart as I came in."

"If you will allow us?" he said, turning half appealing to Colonel
Pendleton, who, without speaking, made a low bow of assent.

A slight flush rose to her face--the first and only change in the even
healthy color she had shown during the interview.

"I reckon I won't trouble you, boys, if it's all the same to you," she
said, with her half-strident laugh. "YOU mightn't mind being seen--but
I would-- Good-by."

She held out a hand to each of the men, who remained for an instant
silently holding them. Then she passed out of the door, slipping on
her close black veil as she did so with a half-funereal suggestion, and
they saw her tall, handsome figure fade into the shadows of the long
corridor.

"Paul," said the Mayor, reentering the office and turning to his
secretary, "do you know who that woman is?"

"Yes, sir."

"She's one in a million! And now forget that you have ever seen her."

CHAPTER I.

The principal parlor of the New Golden Gate Hotel in San Francisco,
fairly reported by the local press as being "truly palatial" in its
appointments, and unrivaled in its upholstery, was, nevertheless, on
August 5, 1860, of that startling newness that checked any familiarity,
and evidently had produced some embarrassment on the limbs of four
visitors who had just been ushered into its glories. After hesitating
before one or two gorgeous fawn-colored brocaded easy-chairs of
appalling and spotless virginity, one of them seated himself
despairingly on a tete-a-tete sofa in marked and painful isolation,
while another sat uncomfortably upright on a sofa. The two others
remained standing, vaguely gazing at the ceiling, and exchanging
ostentatiously admiring but hollow remarks about the furniture in
unnecessary whispers. Yet they were apparently men of a certain habit
of importance and small authority, with more or less critical attitude
in their speech.

To them presently entered a young man of about five-and-twenty, with
remarkably bright and singularly sympathetic eyes. Having swept the
group in a smiling glance, he singled out the lonely occupier of the
tete-a-tete, and moved pleasantly towards him. The man rose instantly
with an eager gratified look.

"Well, Paul,