behind him.”’ ‘Did you act upon this information, Lady Baker?’ asked Geoffrey. ‘I went to Milford next day, and with some difficulty found the house in which the Vandeleurs had lodged; but Mrs. Vandeleur had left the town within the last few weeks with her little girl, and no one could tell me what had become of her. She was very good, very honourable, very unhappy, the landlady told me; had lived in the humblest way, and supported herself by teaching music after her husband left her. I made the woman describe her to me, and the description exactly fitted Janet.’ ‘You have not heard a Mrs. Bertram, a singer who appeared at a good many concerts in London last winter?’ ‘No. I spent last winter in Paris. Do you mean to tell me that this Mrs. Bertram is Janet Davoren under an assumed name?’ ‘I hardly feel myself at liberty to tell you even as much as that without permission from the lady herself. But since you have been so very good to me, Lady Baker, I cannot be churlish enough to affect secrecy in anything that concerns myself alone. You have guessed rightly. I am attached to this lady, and my dearest hope is that I may win her for my wife; but to do this I must discover the fate of her infamous husband, since she refuses to repudiate a tie which I have strong reason to believe is illegal. And now, Lady Baker, pray show me those photographs, and let me see if the man who ruined Janet Davoren’s bright young life is really the man I met in the American backwoods.’ ‘Come to my room,’ said Lady Baker, ‘and you shall see them.’ She led the way to a charming apartment on the upper story, and at one end of the house, spacious, luxurious, with windows commanding every angle of view—bow-windows overhanging the river on one side, an oriel commanding the distant hills on another, long French windows opening upon a broad balcony on the third. Here were scattered those periodicals with which Lady Baker fortified her mind, and supplied herself with the latest varieties in opinion; here were divers davenports and writing-tables at which Lady Baker penned those delightful epistles which were doubtless destined to form part of the light literature of the next generation, printed on thickest paper, and sumptuously bound, and adorned with portraits of her ladyship after different painters, and at various stages of her distinguished career. Here, on a massive stand, were numerous portfolios of photographs, one of which was labelled ‘Personal Friends.’ ‘You will find the groups in that, Mr. Hossack,’ she said, and looked over Geoffrey’s shoulder while he went slowly through the photographs. They came presently to a garden scene, a group of young men and women against a background of sunlit lawn and river; light rustic chairs scattered about, a framework of summer foliage, a tea table on one side, a Blenheim spaniel and a Maltese terrier in the foreground.