ing in spite of himself.
"This is so intensely interesting, one would like to hear the conclusion
of the story."

But Mrs. Oldham only shook her head. "I don't know," she said vaguely. "I
think he did; but I can't be sure."

She began another long story, but Hayden, after listening to enough of it
to assure himself that it had no bearing on The Veiled Mariposa, gave
himself up to the confused conjectures, the hopes, the dreams that
thronged his brain.

Was it a possibility that Marcia, Marcia, might be the heiress of the
great Mariposa estate? The owner, or one of the owners of it? He felt
overcome by the bare mental suggestion. But was it a possibility, even a
dim and remote one? Accepting this as a temporary hypothesis, was it not
borne out by certain facts? The butterflies, for instance. Did not those
jeweled ornaments symbolize in some delicate, fanciful way, Marcia's
way, her ownership of The Veiled Mariposa? And would not that ownership
also account for the much-questioned source of her wealth? He stopped
with a jerk up against a dead wall. The Mariposa mine had not been worked
for years; the ranches were cultivated only by the Spaniard in
possession. These facts were like a dash of cold water, extinguishing the
flame of his hopes. And yet, and yet, the butterflies! But that, he was
forced to admit, might be the merest coincidence.

On that chain of evidence he would find it necessary to regard his
cousin, Kitty Hampton, Mrs. Habersham, the London actress, a score of
women, as possible owners of his Golconda. Nevertheless, in spite of
reason, he could not escape the conviction, unfounded but persistent,
that those butterflies were in some way connected with the ownership of
that distant lost mine. And this purely intuitive belief was suddenly
strengthened by the remembrance of Marcia's embarrassment in the Park, an
hour or two before, when she had involuntarily and inadvertently spoken
of Mademoiselle Mariposa familiarly as Ydo.

"Yes, Mrs. Oldham, I quite agree with you. As you say: 'One can not be
too careful.' Oh, no, I never was more interested in my life."

Ydo! Ydo! He took up the thread of his absorbing reflections again as
Mrs. Oldham's voice purled on reciting with infinite detail all the data
of one of her Helen-like conquests. Ydo! What bond could exist between
the reserved, even haughty Marcia in spite of all her gentleness, and the
capricious, wayward, challenging Ydo? A bond sufficiently strong