"That was my mother's name," she said, with a little laugh. "I thought
you knew it. But perhaps you didn't. When I got my divorce from
Dick--you didn't know that either, I suppose; it's three months ago,--I
didn't care to take my maiden name again; too many people remembered
it. So after the decree was made I called myself Mrs. Merrydew. You had
disappeared. They said you had gone East."

"But the clerk says you are expecting your HUSBAND on the steamer. What
does this mean? Why did you tell him that?" He had so far collected
himself that there was a ring of inquisition in his voice.

"Oh, I had to give him some kind of reason for my being alone when I did
not find you as I expected," she said half wearily. Then a change came
over her tired face; a smile of mingled audacity and tentative coquetry
lit up the small features. "Perhaps it is true; perhaps I may have a
husband coming on the steamer--that depends. Sit down, Jim."

She let his hand drop, and pointed to an armchair from which she had
just risen, and sank down herself in a corner of the sofa, her thin
fingers playing with and drawing themselves through the tassels of the
cushion.

"You see, Jim, as soon as I was free, Louis Sylvester--you remember
Louis Sylvester?--wanted to marry me, and even thought that he was the
cause of Dick's divorcing me. He actually went East to settle up some
property he had left him there, and he's coming on the steamer."

"Louis Sylvester!" repeated Reddy, staring at her. "Why, he was a bigger
fool than I was, and a worse man!" he added bitterly.

"I believe he was," said the lady, smiling, "and I think he still
is. But," she added, glancing at Reddy under her light fringed lids,
"you--you're regularly reformed, aren't you? You're stouter, too, and
altogether more solid and commercial looking. Yet who'd have thought of
your keeping a hotel or ever doing anything but speculate in wild-cat
or play at draw poker. How did you drift into it? Come, tell me! I'm not
Mrs. Sylvester just yet, and maybe I might like to go into the business
too. You don't want a partner, do you?"

Her manner was light and irresponsible, or rather it suggested a
childlike putting of all responsibility for her actions upon others,
which he remembered now too well. Perhaps it was this which kept him
from observing that the corners of her smiling lips, however, twitched
slightly, and that her fingers, twisting the threads of the tassel,
were occasionally st