ger. Another skein of false hair this
season, by Jove."

In a society so charmingly constituted, the blows are dealt with an
impartial hand; and it is so mercifully arranged, that he who is
doubling his fist seldom feels the blow that is falling upon his own
back. It was a belief which consoled the poor Baronet's orphan through
her dreary time at the boarding-house--that, at least, she was free from
damaging comment. Her noble head was many inches out of water; the
conviction gave her superb confidence when she had to pass an opinion
on her neighbour.

Two old friends of Cosmo Bertram are lounging in the garden of the
Imperial Club.

"Hasn't old Tayleure got her knife into Bertram! Poor dear boy. It's all
up with him. Great pity. Was a capital fellow."

"Don't you know the secret? The old girl had designs on Bertram when he
first turned up; and the Daker affair cast her plot to the winds. Mrs.
Daker, you remember, was at old Tayleure's place--Rue d'Angouleme!"

"A pretty business that was. But who the deuce was Daker?"

"Bad egg."

The threads of this story lay in a tangle--in Paris, in Boulogne, and in
Kent! I never laboured hard to unravel them; but time took up the work,
and I was patient. Also, I was far away from its scenes, and only passed
through them at intervals--generally at express speed. It so happened,
however, that I was at hand when the crisis and the close came.

Mrs. Daker was living in a handsome apartment when I called upon her on
the morrow of the ball. She wept passionately when she saw me. She
said--"I could have sunk to the earth when I saw you with Bertram--of
all men in the world." I could get no answers to my questions save that
she had heard no tidings of her husband, and that she had never had the
courage to write to her father. Plentiful tears and prayers that I would
forget her; and never, under any temptation, let her people, should I
come across them, know her assumed name, or her whereabouts. I pressed
as far as I could, but she shut her heart upon me, and hurried me away,
imploring me never to return, nor to speak about her to Cosmo Bertram.
"He will never talk about me," she added, with something like scorn, and
something very like disgust.

I left Paris an hour or two after this interview; and when I next met
Bertram--at Baden, I think, in the following autumn--great as my
curiosity was, I respected Mrs. Baker's wish. He never touched upon the
subject; and, since I could no