an here."

Bayne stared, blankly unresponsive. "What woman?" he asked wonderingly.

"Mrs. Royston, you know--Lillian Marable, that was."

Bayne looked as if suddenly checked in headlong speed--startled, almost
stunned. The blood rushed in a tumultuous flood to his thin cheeks, then
receded, leaving his face mottled red and white. His steel-gray eyes
suddenly glowed like hot metal. There was a moment of tense silence; then
he said, his voice steady and controlled, his manner stiff but not
without dignity, "Pray do not allow that to discompose you. She is
nothing to me."

"I know--I know, of course. I would not have mentioned it, but I feared
an unexpected meeting might embarrass you, here in this seclusion where
you cannot avoid each other."

"You need not have troubled yourself," Bayne protested, looking fixedly
at his cigar as he touched off the long ash with a delicate fillip.

There was a great contrast in the aspect of the two, which accorded with
their obvious differences of mind and temperament. Briscoe, a man of
wealth and leisure, portly and rubicund, was in hunting togs, with
gaiters, knickers, jacket, and negligee shirt, while Bayne, with no trace
of the disorder incident to a long journey by primitive methods of
transportation, was as elaborately groomed and as accurately costumed in
his trig, dark brown, business suit as if he had just stepped from the
elevator of the sky-scraper where his offices as a broker were located.
His manner distinctly intimated that the subject was dismissed, but
Briscoe, who had as kindly a heart as ever beat, was nothing of a
diplomat. He set forth heavily to justify himself.

"You see--knowing that you were once in love with her----"

"Oh, no, my dear fellow," Bayne hastily interrupted; "I never loved
_her_. I loved only my own dream of one fair woman. It did not come true,
that's all."

Briscoe seemed somewhat reassured, but in the pervasive awkwardness of
his plight as host of both parties he could not quit the subject. "Just
so," he acquiesced gladly; "a mere dream--and a dream can make no
sensible man unhappy."

Bayne laughed with a tense note of satire. "Well, the awakening was a
rude jar, I must confess."

For it had been no ordinary termination of an unhappy love affair. It
befell within a fortnight of the date set for the prospective marriage.
All the details of publicity were complete: the cards were out; the
"society columns" of the local journals had reve