“Yes, and myself. I have comprehended enough from an advertisement addressed to me to know that my presence was necessary here. The rest has been explained by Mr. Aylwinne, your friend.” Florence, with rising color, now gazed at her eagerly. Julia smiled reassuringly. “Poor child! It was hard that your happiness should suffer! See, here are two of the letters I had from my worthless husband, and here the certificate of the marriage it suited him to deny, and here are your father’s notes imploring the return of the money intrusted to him. Take them all, Miss Heriton, and may they restore your felicity. Bid Susan clear the brand from my name, and--Heaven bless you both!” She would have turned away directly, but Florence held her dress. “No, Julia, do not leave us thus! Tell me, are you happy? And why have you concealed yourself so long from your friends?” “Do not try to detain me. I cannot see Susan. I am content at present; but I could not remain so if she pleaded with me to forego my present calling. If she asks you what I said concerning myself, tell her that I left England to obtain those papers, and that I went to California on a twofold errand: partly to fulfill a mission intrusted to me by the French police, in whose service I enlisted myself--partly to trace Lieutenant Mason. I was successful in both. None dare point at me now as nameless and degraded!” “But, Julia--forgive me--surely you are not----” “Not what? A paid servant of France? A spy of the police? Bah! They have enriched me--they use me well--my honor is unimpeachable, and why should not I, who owe the misery of a blighted life to man’s villainy, retaliate now the means are in my power?” Florence would have argued, pleaded, entreated; but Julia had come prepared to steel herself against such solicitations. She had been forced, she said, in hard, reckless tones, into the course she was now pursuing--forced by the desertion of the husband she had loved with all the intensity of her passionate nature, and she lived now only for herself. Then, hurriedly repeating her adieus, she extricated herself from the invalid’s feeble hold, and departed. Susan Denham afterward made repeated attempts to see her, or draw her into a correspondence, but in vain. Through a friend of Mr. Aylwinne it transpired that she married a wealthy Parisian financier, and became famous in the fashionable world for her brilliant entertainments. She thus secured the riches and distinction which were the dream of her girlish vanity; but whether she found in such things the happiness she had then anticipated her friends in England never knew. For some time after Julia left her, Florence sat with the letters lying on her lap untouched. Her womanly interest in the fate of her visitor made her forgetful for a while of her own. But by and by an arm stole gently around her, and she turned to find herself in the embrace of the much-tried Frank Aylwinne.