n's kindness to
"maman" when her baby was born during her "enforced stay in San
Francisco," and it was quite possible that the two had been friends, and
that the young mother had adopted the name of Dubois when calling upon
the nuns of the convent at St. Peter, either because it would naturally
occur to her, or from some deeper design which, he could not fathom....

Yes, the connection with Mrs. Lawton was indisputable and it remained for
him to "figger out" as Spaulding would say, which of these women, the
gambler's wife, the notorious "Madam," Gabrielle, the briefly coruscating
Pauline Marie, or the Englishman's mistress, a woman of Mrs. Lawton's
position would be most likely to befriend.

The first three might be dismissed without argument. She had been no
frequenter of "gambling joints" whatever her peccadilloes; Gabrielle,
he happened to know, had died some eight or ten years ago, and
Mademoiselle Pauline Marie, if she had had a child, which was extremely
doubtful, was the sort that sends unwelcome offspring post haste to the
foundling asylum.

There remained only the spurious Mrs. Medford, and she was the
probability on all counts. What more likely than that she and Mrs. Lawton
had met at one of the great winter hotels in Southern California, and
foregathered? Certainly they would be congenial spirits.

When the baby came Mrs. Lawton would naturally see her through her
trouble, and advise her later what to do with the child. No doubt,
Medford found it in the way.

After that Ruyler could only fumble. Did Medford desert the woman,
driving her on the stage?--or elsewhere? Did they start for Japan, and
did he die on the voyage? Did he merely give the woman a pension and tell
her to go back to Rouen, or to the devil? It was positive that when
Helene was five years old Madame Delano had gone back to her relatives
with some trumped up story and been received by them.

Moreover, this theory coincided with, his belief that Helene's father
was a gentleman. No doubt he had been already married when he met the
young French girl, superbly handsome, and intelligent--possibly at one
of the French watering places, even in Rouen itself, swarming with
tourists in Summer. They might have met in the spacious aisles of the
Cathedral, she risen from her prayers, he wandering about, Baedeker in
hand, and fallen in love at sight. One of Earth's million romances,
regenerating the aged planet for a moment, only to sink back and
dis