increased Darrow's interest in Miss
Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much
penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the
heart of any practical problem.

Madame de Chantelle sighed out her recognition of the difficulty.

"I haven't a word to say against Miss Viner; but she's knocked about
so, as it's called, that she must have been mixed up with some rather
dreadful people. If only Owen could be made to see that--if one could
get at a few facts, I mean. She says, for instance, that she has a
sister; but it seems she doesn't even know her address!"

"If she does, she may not want to give it to you. I daresay the sister's
one of the dreadful people. I've no doubt that with a little time you
could rake up dozens of them: have her 'traced', as they call it in
detective stories. I don't think you'd frighten Owen, but you might:
it's natural enough he should have been corrupted by those foreign
ideas. You might even manage to part him from the girl; but you couldn't
keep him from being in love with her. I saw that when I looked them
over last evening. I said to myself: 'It's a real old-fashioned American
case, as sweet and sound as home-made bread.' Well, if you take his loaf
away from him, what are you going to feed him with instead? Which of
your nasty Paris poisons do you think he'll turn to? Supposing you
succeed in keeping him out of a really bad mess--and, knowing the young
man as I do, I rather think that, at this crisis, the only way to do it
would be to marry him slap off to somebody else--well, then, who, may I
ask, would you pick out? One of your sweet French ingenues, I suppose?
With as much mind as a minnow and as much snap as a soft-boiled egg. You
might hustle him into that kind of marriage; I daresay you could--but
if I know Owen, the natural thing would happen before the first baby was
weaned."

"I don't know why you insinuate such odious things against Owen!"

"Do you think it would be odious of him to return to his real love when
he'd been forcibly parted from her? At any rate, it's what your French
friends do, every one of them! Only they don't generally have the grace
to go back to an old love; and I believe, upon my word, Owen would!"

Madame de Chantelle looked at her with a mixture of awe and exultation.
"Of course you realize, Adelaide, that in suggesting this you're
insinuating the most shocking things against Miss Viner?"

"When I say th