asn't bad; if he'd only been
on the square, he might have made a very brilliant detective!"

"How terrible his death was!" Anita shuddered. "And how unexplainable!
No one ever found out who stabbed him, there in the park, did they?"

Blaine did not reply. He knew that on the day following the discovery
of the murdered man, one Franchette Durand, otherwise Fifine
Dechaussee, had sailed for Havre on the ill-fated _La Tourette_, which
had gone to the bottom in mid-ocean, with all on board. He knew also
that an hour before the French girl's last tragic interview with
Paddington, she had discovered the existence of his wife, for he
himself had seen to it that the knowledge was imparted to her. Further
than that, he preferred not to conjecture. The Madonna-faced girl had
taken her secret with her to her swiftly retributive grave in the
deep.

Blaine rose, somewhat reluctantly. Work called him, and yet he loved
to be near them in the rose-tinted high noon of their happiness.

"I'll be on hand to-morrow, indeed I will!" he promised heartily, in
response to their eager request.

"To-morrow! Just think!" Anita buried her glowing face in her lover's
shoulder for an instant, and then looked up with misty eyes. "Just
think, if it hadn't been for you, Mr. Blaine, there wouldn't be any
to-morrow! I don't mean about your getting my father's money all back
for me--I'm grateful, of course, but it doesn't count beside the
greater thing you have given us! But for you, there would _never_
have been any--to-morrow."

"That's true!" The young man's arm encircled the girl's slender waist
as they stood together in the glowing sunlight, but his other hand
gripped the detective's. "We owe life, our happiness, the future,
everything to you!"

And so Henry Blaine left them.

At the door he turned and glanced back, and the sight his eyes beheld
was a goodly one for him to carry away with him into the world--a
sight as old as the ages, as new as the hour, as prescient as the
hours and ages to come. Just a man and a maid, sunshine and happiness,
youth and love!--that, and the light of undying gratitude in the eyes
they bent upon him.

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Archaic and variable spelling, as well as inconsistency in hyphenation,
has been preserved as printed in the original book except as indicated
in the list below.

Missing and extra quote marks, along with minor punctuation
irr