"I don't know," said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing was a great blow to him. He was never passionately in love with her, but he was very fond of her in his own way--increasingly fond of her--up to that miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his one thought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that child from the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realized that his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemed to lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, not knowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought an action--a writ of _habeas corpus_, I think--to recover his daughter, as an English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long----" "Naturally," said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him--after the decree." "So he discovered, poor old fellow! The action was, of course, obstructed and delayed in every way, by the power of Mrs. Barnes's millions behind the scenes. His lawyers told him plainly from the beginning that he had precious little chance. And presently he found himself the object of a press campaign in some of the yellow papers--all of it paid for and engineered by his wife. He was held up as the brutal fortune-hunting Englishman, who had beguiled an American heiress to marry him, had carried her off to England to live upon her money, had then insulted her by scandalous flirtations with a lady to whom he had formerly been engaged, had shown her constant rudeness and unkindness, and had finally, in the course of a quarrel, knocked her down, inflicting shock and injury from which she had suffered ever since. Mrs. Barnes had happily freed herself from him, but he was now trying to bully her through the child--had, it was said, threatened to carry off the little girl by violence. Mrs. Barnes went in terror of him. America, however, would know how to protect both the mother and the child! You can imagine the kind of thing. Well, very soon Roger began to find himself a marked man in hotels, followed in the streets, persecuted by interviewers; and the stream of lies that found its way even into the respectable newspapers about him, his former life, his habits, etc., is simply incredible! Unfortunately, he gave some handle----" French paused a moment. "Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours." French rose and began to pace the room. "It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly," he said at last. "The night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--her pretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitement and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a thing he had never done in his life before. But----" "He has often done it since?" French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis. "Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off."