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She had not the power left to scream; and her head fell heavily upon the pillow of the dying man. "Enough, enough!" the clergyman said with authority closing the door of the chamber wherein Herbert Daker, the "Mr. Charles" of the Rue Millevoye, lay dead! Cosmo Bertram was at a very low ebb. No horse. Had moved off to Batignolles. Had not been asked to the Embassy for a twelvemonth.

I envied Daker when I saw him drive away to the station with the gentle girl at his side; I knew that she was nestling against him, and half her illness was only an excuse to get nearer to his heart. Why should I envy him? Could I have seen through his face into his heart at that moment I should have thanked God, who made me of simpler mould a lonely, but an honourable man.

But I gave him letters. There was one hope that lingered in the gloom of this miserable story; perhaps Mrs. Daker had won the love of some honest man, and, emancipated by Daker's deceit and death, might yet spend some happy days. And then the figure of Cosmo Bertram would rise before me and I knew he was not the man to atone a fault or sin by a sacrifice. I was in Paris again at the end of 1866.

Presently the guard, the travelling commissioner, and half-a-dozen more in official costume, appeared, surrounding a lady, who was in deep distress. Had I seen a gentleman fair, &c., &c.? I turned and beheld Mrs. Daker. She darted at me, and I can never forget the look which accompanied the question "You were with my husband on the boat. Where is he?"

I begged her to get her luggage, go to her hotel, and leave me to watch and search. What hotel were they to use? She knew nothing about it. Her husband hadn't told her, for she was an utter stranger to Paris. She looked even prettier in her distress than when her happy eyes were beaming, as I first caught sight of them, upon Herbert Daker.

Bertram leaves me and is lost in the crowd. The conversation is measured and orderly. The dancing begins, and I figure in the quadrille of honour. I am giving my partner a dark-eyed, vivacious lady an ice, when I am tapped upon the shoulder by Cosmo Bertram. Bertram has a lady on his arm. He turns to her, saying "Permit me to present my friend to you, Madame Trefoil " "What! Mrs. Daker!" I cried.

I never laboured hard to unravel them; but time took up the work, and I was patient. Also, I was far away from its scenes, and only passed through them at intervals generally at express speed. It so happened, however, that I was at hand when the crisis and the close came. Mrs. Daker was living in a handsome apartment when I called upon her on the morrow of the ball.

When the passengers crowded to the side, pressing and jostling to effect an early landing, and the fishwives were scrambling from the paddles to the deck, I came upon Daker and his wife once more. She glanced shyly and not very good-humouredly at me, and seemed to say, "It was you who diverted the attention of my Herbert from me so long."

Daker, who followed him with the deep eyes as he returned to my side with his open cigar-case, to offer me a cheroot. "Do you know anything of Amiens?" he said. "Is it a large place busy, thriving?" I gave him my impression a ten-year old one. "Not a place a man could lose himself in, evidently," he joked; "and they've been mowed down rather smartly by the cholera since you were there."

I had lost a round sum of money in that delightful place, where our ambassador was wont to refresh himself after his diplomatic labours and ceremonials. "I know the place," Daker went on; "I know Chantilly well. It wakes up a curious dream of the long ago in my mind." "And Enghien?" "Comme ma poche." Daker knew his Enghien well and Enghien was profoundly acquainted with Daker.