learned from her
solicitors that the company had settled, and that they, the lawyers,
had paid to her bankers the sum of 15,000 pounds being the whole of the
insurance.

Acting, then, on her husband's instructions, she sought another bank
and opened an account for one William Linville, gentleman, residing
abroad. She gave herself as a reference, left the usual signature of
William Linville, and paid to his account a cheque for 8,000 pounds.
She saw the manager of her own bank, explained that this large cheque
was for an investment, and asked him to let her have 2,000 pounds in
bank notes. This sum, she added, was for a special purpose. The manager
imagined that she was about to perform some act of charity, perhaps an
expiatory work on behalf of her late husband.

She then wrote to Dr. Vimpany, who was in Paris, making an appointment
with him. Her work of fraud and falsehood was complete.

"There has been no trouble at all," she wrote to her husband; "and
there will not be any. The insurance company has already settled the
claim. I have paid 8,000 pounds to the account of William Linville. My
own banker--who knows my father--believes that the money is an
investment. My dear Harry, I believe that, unless the doctor begins to
worry us--which he will do as soon as his money is all gone--a clear
course lies before us. Let us, as I have already begged you to do, go
straight away to some part of America, where you are certain not to be
known. You can dye your hair and grow a beard to make sure. Let us go
away from every place and person that may remind us of time past.
Perhaps, in time, we may recover something of the old peace and--can it
ever be?--the old self-respect."

There was going to be trouble, however, and that of a kind little
expected, impossible to be guarded against. And it would be trouble
caused by her own act and deed.

CHAPTER LIX

THE CONSEQUENCES OF AN ADVERTISEMENT

THE trouble was made by Iris herself.

In this way--

She saw Fanny's advertisement. Her first impulse was to take her back
into her service. But she remembered the necessity for concealment. She
must not place herself--she realised already the fact that she had done
a thing which would draw upon her the vengeance of the law--and her
husband in the power of this woman, whose fidelity might not stand the
shock of some fit of jealousy, rage, or revenge for fancied slight. She
must henceforth be cut off altogether from all her old