From the astounding narrative to which Mr. Shelford listened, he learned the following remarkable facts: Mrs. Makris, the mother of Elise, a very beautiful young woman, had posed, ever since Craig knew her, as the widow of a Greek merchant who had left her comfortably off. Her late husband’s fortune was settled upon her for life, she told him, and her daughter would inherit it at her death. It was on Craig’s last visit to Nice, and then only towards the end of it, that his suspicions concerning the truth of her story were aroused. Elise had addressed to him by mistake a letter intended for somebody else, a letter of a most suspicious character, betraying her acquaintance with a very questionable set of people. When he asked her for an explanation, her replies were evasive and unsatisfactory, so much so that he at once came to the conclusion that both the girl and her mother were quite different from what they seemed. He did not at once break off with her, wishing to test the truth of his suspicions. For this purpose he secured the services of a private inquiry agent, without doubt the shabby furtive-looking man to whom Leonard had seen him talking in that quiet side street. This man soon discovered the horrible fact that both the woman and her daughter were connected with a well-known gang of international crooks. Elise, with her beauty and charm, was one of their most useful decoys, and under another name had served a term of imprisonment a short time before Craig had made her acquaintance. The woman Makris had never been married, so he alleged; the girl was her illegitimate daughter, the father having been a member of the same gang. To the young man, whose affections she had captured, Elise had represented herself as a model of simplicity and purity. As they did not see each other very frequently, it was the more easy for her to maintain the double rôle of sweetheart to him and the clever decoy of these unscrupulous scoundrels. But for her own carelessness in putting the wrong letter into the envelope directed to him, Craig had made up his mind to marry her privately and tell his family afterwards. “A most astounding story,” was the remark of the shrewd and experienced lawyer when the narrative was finished. “Poor fellow, one cannot but pity him in spite of the fact that he took the law into his own hands. The discovery of her baseness must have overthrown his reason. How deceptive are appearances. One would have judged him the last man in the world to be swayed by violent passions. Clearly the mind must have given way under the shock.” “There are some rather obscure hints that he had been subjected to blackmail, and that through this man he employed, he was able to trace it to her agency. That of course would have a maddening effect upon any man in a similar position.”