days, when I was hungry and sick, I went to one of
the English hotels. I would have taken anything, even a servant's
work, I believe."

He cursed himself to think that it was through him that she had come to
such things.

"But I was lucky," she went on, hurriedly. "One afternoon I stumbled
on a weeping lady's maid, on the verge of hysterics, who found enough
confidence in me, in time, to tell me that her mistress had gone mad in
her room and was clawing down the wallpaper and talking about killing
herself. It was true enough, in a way, I soon found out, for it was an
English noblewoman who had fought with her husband two weeks before in
London, and had run away to Paris. What she had dipped into, and gone
through, and suffered, I could only guess; but I know this: that that
afternoon she had drunk half a pint of raw alcohol when the frightened
maid had locked her in the bath-room. So I pushed in and took charge.
First I wired to the woman's husband, Lord Boxspur, who sent me money,
at once, and an order to bring her home as quietly as possible. He met
us at Calais. It was a terrible ordeal for me, all through, for she
tried to jump overboard, in the Channel, and was so insane, so
hopelessly insane, that a week after we reached London she was
committed to some sort of private asylum."

"And then?" asked Durkin.

"Then Boxspur thought that possibly I knew too much for his personal
comfort. I rather think he looked on me as dangerous. He put me off
and put me off, until I was glad to snatch at a position in a
next-of-kin agency. But in a fortnight or two I was even more glad to
leave it. Then I went back to Lord Boxspur, who this time sent me
helter-skelter back to Paris, to bribe a blackmailing newspaper woman
from giving the details of his wife's misfortunes to the Continental
correspondent of a London weekly. But even when that was done, and I
had been duly paid for my work, I was only secure for a few weeks, at
the outside. All along I kept writing for you, frantically. So, when
things began to get hopeless again, I went to the British Embassy. I
had to lie, terribly, I'm afraid, before I could get an audience, first
with an under secretary, and then with the ambassador himself. He said
that he regretted he could do nothing for me, at least, officially. He
looked at my clothes, and laughed a little, and said that of course, in
cases of absolute destitution he sometimes felt compelled to come to
t