When the baby came Mrs. Lawton would naturally see her through her trouble, and advise her later what to do with the child. No doubt, Medford found it in the way. After that Ruyler could only fumble. Did Medford desert the woman, driving her on the stage?--or elsewhere? Did they start for Japan, and did he die on the voyage? Did he merely give the woman a pension and tell her to go back to Rouen, or to the devil? It was positive that when Helene was five years old Madame Delano had gone back to her relatives with some trumped up story and been received by them. Moreover, this theory coincided with, his belief that Helene's father was a gentleman. No doubt he had been already married when he met the young French girl, superbly handsome, and intelligent--possibly at one of the French watering places, even in Rouen itself, swarming with tourists in Summer. They might have met in the spacious aisles of the Cathedral, she risen from her prayers, he wandering about, Baedeker in hand, and fallen in love at sight. One of Earth's million romances, regenerating the aged planet for a moment, only to sink back and disappear into her forgotten dust. His own romance? What was to be the end of that! But he returned to his argument. He wanted a coherent story to tell his wife, and he wanted also to believe that his wife's father had been a gentleman. Medford, like so many of his eloping kind, had made instinctively for California with the beautiful woman he loved but could not marry. Santa Barbara, Ruyler had heard, had been the favorite haven for two generations of couples fleeing from irking bonds in the societies of England and the continent of Europe. Southern California combined a wild independence with a languor that blunted too sensitive nerves, offered an equable climate with months on end of out of door life, boating, shooting, riding, driving, motoring, romantic excursions, and even sport if a distinguished looking couple played the game well and told a plausible story.