Yet the morning papers of the next day had apparently forgotten this incident. They were off in full cry upon a much more dangerous trail by digging deeper into the relations between the minister and the actress. As if from hotel employees, or some one in Miss Dounay’s service, one of them had elicited and put together a story of all the calls that Hampstead had made upon Miss Dounay in her hotel during the five weeks she had been at the St. Albans. This story made it appear that the minister had become infatuated with the actress, and that he had sought every means of spending time in her company. It was skillfully revealed that Miss Dounay at first had been greatly attracted by the personality and the apparent sincerity of the clergyman; but as her social acquaintance in the city rapidly extended and the work upon her London production became more engrossing, she had less and less time for him, and was finally compelled to deny herself almost entirely to the divine’s unwelcome attentions, notwithstanding which the clergyman still found means of forcing himself upon the actress. One such occasion, it appeared, had prevented the appearance of Miss Dounay at a dinner given by a very prominent society lady of the town, where the brilliant woman was to have been the guest of honor. Some one had even recalled that the minister was not an invited guest at the dinner during which the diamonds were stolen. He had presented himself, it seemed, after the affair was in progress and departed before its conclusion. But it was left to one of the evening papers of this day to explode the climactic story of the series. The writers of the morning story had been careful to protect the conduct of Miss Dounay from injurious inference; but now the _Evening Messenger_ went upon the streets with a story that left Miss Dounay’s character to take care of itself, and purported boldly to defend the minister. PREACHER NOT THIEF, boldly ventured the headlines. The report declared that an intimacy of long standing had existed between the minister and the actress. The public was reminded of what part of it had forgotten and the rest never knew, that John Hampstead had himself been an actor. The narrative told how the minister had made his professional debut in Los Angeles by carrying this same Marien Dounay in his arms in _Quo Vadis_, night after night, in scene after scene, during the run of the play; and hinted broadly of an attachment beginning then which had ripened quickly into something very powerful, so powerful, in fact, that when Hampstead was playing with the "People’s", an obscure stock company in San Francisco, Miss Dounay had broken with Mowrey at the Grand Opera House, because he refused to have the awkward amateur in his company, and had herself gone out to the little theater in Hayes Valley and lent to its performance the glamour of her name and personality, merely to be near the idol upon whom her affections had fixed themselves so fiercely.