"Out of the house, yes--never, never to return, for my work there is done. But not to the office of _The Beacon_. Lady Henry’s box shall be sent to her by parcel post to-morrow morning, and Mrs. Randall’s cheque will be in the coat pocket. That will surprise her a little, but it won’t matter to me; for, after having called here for my cheque, I think I’ll take the two o’clock train for the Continent. I shall have plenty of money to enjoy myself, and I feel I need a change of air." "You are wonderful!" repeated Sir Edmund Foster. CHAPTER XI--Kismet and a V.C. "Now, where on earth have I seen that girl before?" Joan Carthew asked herself. It was at Biarritz, where she was enjoying, as she put it to herself, a well-earned holiday; and she was known at her hotel, and among the few acquaintances she had made, as the Comtesse de Merival, a young widow with plenty of money. She was a Comtesse because it is easy to say that one has married a sprig of foreign nobility, without being found out; she was a widow because it is possible for a widow to be alone, unchaperoned, and to amuse herself without ceasing to be _comme il faut_. Joan had amused herself a great deal during the six weeks since she had left England, and the cream of the amusement had consisted in inventing a romantic story about herself and getting it believed. It was as good as acting in a successful play which one has written for oneself. At the present moment she was walking on the _plage_, pleasantly conscious that she was one of the prettiest and best-dressed women among many who were pretty and well-dressed. Then a blonde girl passed her, a blonde girl who was new to Biarritz, but who, somehow, did not seem new to Joan’s retina. Her photograph was somewhere in the book of memory, and, oddly enough, it seemed to have a background of sea and blue sky, as it had to-day. The girl was pretty, as a beautifully dressed, golden-haired doll in a shop window is pretty. She was also exceedingly "good form," and she was vouched for as a young person of importance by a remarkably distinguished-looking old man who strolled beside her. They turned, and in passing the "Comtesse" for the second time, the girl looked full in Joan’s face, with a lingering gaze such as a spoiled beauty often directs upon a possible rival. Then, all in an instant, Joan knew. "Why," she reminded herself, "it’s the girl I saw at Brighton--the girl I envied. I know it is she. That’s eight years ago, but I can’t be mistaken." Somehow this seemed an important discovery. If Joan, a miserable, overworked slavey of twelve, nursing her tyrant’s baby, had not been bitten with consuming jealousy of a child no older but a thousand times more fortunate than herself, she might have gone on indefinitely as a slavey, and might never have had a career.