alone with their dead.

And it was of the dead I thought last and most sorrowfully: a man of
character, of force, of fascination. How I could have liked him!

CHAPTER XIX

The End of the Story

Paris in June! Do you know it, with its bright days and its soft
nights, murmurous with voices? Paris with its crowded pavements--and
such a crowd, where every man and woman awakens interest, excites
speculation! Paris, with its blue sky and its trees, and its
color--and its fascination there is no describing!

Joy is a great restorer, and a week of happiness in this enchanted
city had wrought wonders in our junior and his betrothed. It was good
to look at them--to smile at them sometimes; as when they stood
unseeing before some splendid canvas at the Louvre. The past was put
aside, forgotten; they lived only for the future.

And a near future, too. There was no reason why it should be deferred;
we had all agreed that they were better married at once; so, that
decided, the women sent us about our own affairs, and spent the
intervening fortnight in a riot of visits to the costumer: for, in
Paris, even for a very quiet wedding, a bride must have her trousseau.
But the great day came at last; the red tape of French administration
was successfully unknotted; and at noon they were wedded, with only we
three for witnesses, at the pretty chapel of St. Luke's, near the
Boulevard Montparnasse.

There was a little breakfast afterward at Mrs. Kemball's apartment,
and then our hostess bade them adieu, and her daughter and I drove
with them across Paris to the Gare de Lyon, where they were to take
train for a fortnight on the Riviera. We waved them off and turned
back together.

"It is a desecration to use a carriage on such a day," said my
companion: so we dismissed ours and sauntered afoot down the Boulevard
Diderot toward the river.

"So that is the end of the story," she said musingly.

"Of _their_ story, yes," I interjected.

"But there are still certain things I do not quite understand," she
continued, not heeding me.

"Yes?"

"For instance--why did they trouble to keep her prisoner?"

"Family affection?"

"Nonsense! There could be none. Besides the man dominated them; and I
believe him to have been capable of any crime."

"Perhaps he meant the hundred thousand to be only the first payment.
With her at hand, he might hope to get more indefinitely. Without
her----"

"Well, without her?"

"Oh, the plot g