had been a widow? Perhaps this made him think of the wife he had
deserted so long ago. He had been quite content to live without regret
or affection, forgetting and forgotten, but in his present prosperity
he felt there was some need of putting his domestic affairs into a more
secure and legitimate shape, to avert any catastrophe like the last.
HERE at least would be no difficulty; husbands had deserted their wives
before this in Californian emigration, and had been heard of only after
they had made their fortune. Any plausible story would be accepted by
HER in the joy of his reappearance; or if, indeed, as he reflected
with equal complacency, she was dead or divorced from him through his
desertion--a sufficient cause in her own State--and re-married, he
would at least be more secure. He began, without committing himself,
by inquiry and anonymous correspondence. His wife, he learnt, had left
Missouri for Sacramento only a month or two after his own disappearance
from that place, and her address was unknown!

A complication so unlooked for disquieted him, and yet whetted his
curiosity. The only person she might meet in California who could
possibly identify him with the late Mr. Farendell was Duffy; he had
often wondered if that mysterious partner of Scranton's had been
deceived with the others, or had ever suspected that the body discovered
in the counting-house was Scranton's. If not, he must have accepted the
strange coincidence that Scranton had disappeared also the same night.
In the first six months of his exile he had searched the Californian
papers thoroughly, but had found no record of any doubt having been
thrown on the accepted belief. It was these circumstances, and perhaps
a vague fascination not unlike that which impels the malefactor to haunt
the scene of his crime, that, at the end of four years, had brought him,
a man of middle age and assured occupation and fortune, back to the city
he had fled from.

A few days at one of the new hotels convinced him thoroughly that he was
in no danger of recognition, and gave him the assurance to take rooms
more in keeping with his circumstances and his own frankly
avowed position as the head of a South American house. A cautious
acquaintance--through the agency of his banker--with a few business men
gave him some occupation, and the fact of his South American letters
being addressed to Don Diego Smith gave a foreign flavor to his
individuality, which his tanned face