His old friend Langton came to him and took him away from the hotel to his own house. Alphonse wept and the _concierge_ could not restrain a tear. "And have they found _her_ yet?" asked Mrs Langton that night of her husband when he came in late. His face was very white. "Yes," he said, and turned his head away. "I've been to--I've seen--no one could have told--you would not have known who it was. And all her little things, her watch and rings--they were all gone. But the maid knew by the dress. And--and I wanted to save a lock of hair, but"--his voice broke down.--"So I got one of the little gloves for him. It was the only thing I could." He pulled out a half-worn tan glove, cut and dusty with the tramp of many feet, which the new wedding ring had worn ever so slightly on the third finger. He laid it reverently on the table and hid his face in his hands. "If he could only break down," he said at last. "He sits and sits, and never speaks or looks up." "Take him the little glove," said his wife softly. And Langton took it. The sharpness of death had cut too deep for tears, but Geoffrey kept the little glove, and--he has it still. * * * * * THE PITFALL PART I "Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin Beset the Road I was to wander in." --OMAR KHAYYÁM. Lady Mary Carden sat near the open window of her blue and white boudoir looking out intently, fixedly across Park Lane at the shimmer of the trees in Hyde Park. It was June. It was sunny. The false gaiety of the season was all around her; flickering swiftly past her in the crush of carriages below her window; dawdling past her in the walking and riding crowds in the park. She looked at it without seeing it. Perhaps she had had enough of it, this strange conglomeration of alien elements and foreign bodies, this _bouille-à-baisse_ which is called "The Season." She had seen it all year after year for twelve years, varying as little as the bedding out of the flowers behind the railings. Perhaps she was as weary of society as most people become who take it seriously. She certainly often said that it was rotten to the core. She hardly moved. She sat with an open letter in her hand, thinking, thinking. The house was very still. Her aunt, with whom she lived, had gone early into the country for the day. The only sound, the monotonous whirr of the great machine of London, came from without.