y
forefathers, and those who begat them, have heard, from the birth of
the generations."

The girl, with strained face, stood looking out into the darkness.
Outside, the wind and sea imposed their thunder upon the land. Within,
there was no sound but the softer patter of the cards, the languid
voices of the four who played bridge. A curious little company, on the
whole. The Princess of Strurm, whose birth was as sure as her social
standing was doubtful, the heroine of countless scandals, ignored by
the great heads of her family, impoverished, living no one knew how,
yet remaining the legal guardian of a stepdaughter, who was reputed to
be one of the greatest heiresses in Europe. The courts had moved to
have her set aside, and failed. A Cardinal of her late husband's faith,
empowered to treat with her on behalf of his relations, offered a
fortune for her cession of Jeanne, and was laughed at for his pains.
Whatever her life had been, she remained custodian of the child of the
great banker whom she had married late in life. She endured calmly the
threats, the entreaties, the bribes, of Jeanne's own relations. Jeanne,
she was determined, should enter life under her wing, and hers only. In
the end she had her way. Jeanne was entering life now, not through the
respectable but somewhat bourgeois avenue by which her great monied
relatives would have led her, but under the auspices of her stepmother,
whose position as chaperon to a great heiress had already thrown open a
great many doors which would have been permanently closed to her in any
other guise. The Princess herself was always consistent. She assumed to
herself an arrogant right to do as she pleased and live as she pleased.
She was of the House of Strurm, which had been noble for centuries, and
had connections with royalty. That was enough. A few forgot her past
and admitted her claim. Those who did not she ignored....

Then there was Lord Ronald Engleton, an orphan brought up in Paris, a
would-be decadent, a dabbler in all modern iniquities, redeemed from
folly only by a certain not altogether wholesome cleverness, yet with a
disposition which sometimes gained for him friends in most unlikely
quarters. He had excellent qualities, which he did his best to conceal;
impulses which he was continually stifling.

By his side sat Forrest, the Sphynx, more than middle-aged, a man who
had wandered all over the world, who had tried many things without ever
achieving prosperi