Fanny explained that her husband had gone for a couple of days' shooting to the house of a bachelor friend in the shires. "So much the better," observed Denia in her old quick way. "Pleased as on many accounts I should have been to see Mr. Winslade again, I am more pleased that he is not here to-night. But your eyes are asking what the favour is that I want you to grant me. It is simply this: I have left my husband, without his knowledge or consent, and I want you to give me shelter till morning." "You have left your husband!" exclaimed Fanny. "Oh, Mrs. Gascoigne!" "Yes, I have left him, never to go back," replied Dania with a hard cold glitter in her blue-grey eyes. Then with deft fingers she unfastened a portion of her dress, and baring her left shoulder, exposed to Fanny's shocked gaze a great livid bruise. "That is where he struck me last night with his clenched fist and felled me to the ground. It is not the first occasion by many that he has struck me. But last night was the climax. Then and there I swore an oath to leave him. He did not believe me, but when he gets home from his club at midnight he will not find me there. To-day I have been making certain arrangements which to-morrow will see completed. At ten o'clock my cousin, William Champneys--the son of my late uncle--will call here for me (you see, dear, I have taken the liberty of assuming that you won't turn me into the street), and will take me down into the country to some relatives of my mother, whom I have not seen since I was quite a child." It is almost needless to state that Mrs. Gascoigne was accorded the shelter she craved. At ten o'clock next morning a hired brougham drove up at the door, and Mr. William Champneys was announced. Denia had already breakfasted (her troubles seemed in no wise to have impaired her appetite), and two minutes sufficed her to put on her outdoor things. Having introduced her cousin to Fanny, she seemed in a hurry to be gone. Her last words as she touched Fanny's cheek with her lips were: "I shall be sure to write to you, dear, and let you know how I am getting on." But she never did. Two months later Mr. Ferdinand Gascoigne fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. Half a year later still came an Australian newspaper, addressed to Winslade, containing an announcement of the marriage of "Evan Wildash, Esq., formerly of Solchester, England, to Denia (_née_ Lidington), widow of Ferdinand Gascoigne, Esq., of London." When Phil read the announcement aloud he and his wife could only stare at one another in blank bewilderment. "Evan Wildash alive!" gasped Phil. "And married to Denia at last!" exclaimed Fanny. "Of all the strange developments brought about by the Loudwater case this last one is the strangest of all." "By the way," remarked Phil a little later, "you never told me, or else I omitted to ask, what kind of looking man was the cousin in whose charge Mrs. Gascoigne left here."