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Updated: June 19, 2025
"I'm not very bright to-day. I think it was the sirocco of yesterday that has upset me a little, that's all." Then, while they were seated at table, Dorise suddenly exclaimed: "Oh! do you know, mother, that young French lady over yonder, Madame Jacomet, has just told me something.
Won't you trust me, Dorise?" "Trust you!" she echoed. "Why, of course I will! You surely know that, Hugh." The young man was again silent for some moments. Then he exclaimed: "Yet, after all, I can see no ray of hope." "Why?" "Hope of our marriage, Dorise," he said hoarsely. "How can I, without money, ever hope to make you my wife?"
"The whole affair is so tangled that I can see nothing clearly only that my refusal to marry Louise will mean ruin to me and I shall lose Dorise in the bargain!" Walter Brock, older and more experienced, was equally mystified. The pessimistic attitude of the three doctors who had attended the injured woman was, indeed, far from reassuring.
"I must say that you are the reverse of polite, Miss Dorise," and his colour heightened. "I am! And I intend to be so!" she cried in a frenzy, for all her affection for Hugh had in those moments been redoubled. Her lover was accused and had no chance of self-defence. "Go back to my mother," she went on. "Tell her every word I have said and embroider it as much as you like.
If you care to write him a letter, I will deliver it." "Will you come with me over to the Empress Club, and I will write the letter there?" Dorise suggested, still entirely mystified.
"But I regret you have the advantage of me?" "Probably," replied the stranger. "Do you recollect the bal blanc at Nice and a certain white cavalier? I have a message from him to give you in secret." "Why in secret?" Dorise asked rather defiantly. "Well for certain reasons which I think you can guess," answered the girl in black, as she strolled at Dorise's side.
Later, he strolled along the road over which he knew Dorise must come. But all to no avail. There was no sign of her. Until six o'clock he waited, when, in blank despair, he mounted beside Mead again and drove back to Shapley Manor. It was curious that Dorise had not come to meet him, but he attributed it to The Sparrow's inability to convey a message to her.
"I wonder if I dare go there to see him? What a dead-alive hole!" Not until then did Dorise recollect that the girl had not given her Hugh's address. She had, perhaps, purposely withheld it. This fact she told Hugh's friend, who replied over the wire: "Well, it is highly satisfactory news, in any case. We can only wait, Miss Ranscomb. But this must relieve your mind, I feel sure."
While Hugh Henfrey was travelling along that winding road over high headlands and down steep gradients to the sea which stretched the whole length of the Italian Riviera, Dorise Ranscomb in a white silk domino and black velvet mask was pretending to enjoy herself amid the mad gaiety at the Casino in Nice.
"No, Dorise, no more need be said!" interrupted Lady Ranscomb severely. "You surely would not be so idiotic as to throw in your lot with a man who is certainly a criminal." "A criminal! Why do you denounce him, mother?" "Well, he stands self-condemned. He has been in hiding ever since that night at Monte Carlo. If he were innocent, he would surely, for your sake, come forward and clear himself.
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