mpany, Pargeter valued her
presence as part of what the French so excellently style the _decor_ of
his life; she was his thing, for which he had paid a good price; some of
his friends, the sycophants with which he loved to be surrounded, would
have said that he had paid for her very dearly.

It was very unlikely, however, that Tom Pargeter would return to Paris
before he was expected to do so. For many years past he had spent the
first fortnight of each May at Newmarket; and, as is the curious custom
of his kind, he seldom varied the order of his rather monotonous
pleasures.

But stay--Vanderlyn suddenly remembered Madame de Lera, that is the one
human being who had been in Peggy's confidence. She was a real and
terrible point of danger--or rather she might at any moment become so.
It was with her, at the de Lera villa in the little village of
Marly-le-Roi, that Mrs. Pargeter was, even now, supposed to be staying.
This being so, he, Vanderlyn, must make it his business to see Madame de
Lera at the first possible moment. Together they would have to concoct
some kind of possible story--he shuddered with repugnance at the
thought.

Long before Peggy's confidences in the train, the American diplomatist
had been well aware that Adele de Lera disapproved of his close
friendship with Mrs. Pargeter; and she had never lent herself to any of
those innocent complicities with which even good women are often so
ready to help those of their friends who are most foolish--whom perhaps
they know to be more tempted--than themselves.

The one thing of paramount importance, so Vanderlyn suddenly reminded
himself, was that no one--not even Madame de Lera--should ever know that
he and Margaret Pargeter had left Paris that night, together. How could
this fact be best concealed, and concealed for ever?

To the unspoken question came swift answer. It flashed on the man
lingering on the solitary river-side quay, that even now, to-night, it
was not too late for him to establish the most effectual of alibis. By
taking a fiacre and bribing the man to drive quickly he could be back in
his rooms in the Rue de Rivoli, dressed, and at his club, before
midnight. Fool that he was to have wasted even a quarter of an hour!

Vanderlyn struck sharply across the dimly-lighted thoroughfare; he
started walking down one of the narrow streets which connect the river
quays with commercial Paris. A few moments later, having picked up a
cab, he was driving ra