He had seen little John Aylmer's mother once before, at her wedding nine years previously. She had been a girl, then, almost a child, and young for her age, which was barely eighteen. Her beauty had been the fresh, innocent _beauté du diable_. She was fair, blue-eyed, with a tendency to fragility. And if report told the truth, her beauty had wasted and her fragility increased through the cruel years of her husband's domination. A bare six months ago she had been freed. Her father's millions had helped her to a separation which English Courts had made a legal one. They had also given her the custody of her one child, the heir to the Aylmer name and the Landon title. This girl was fair, indeed; her eyes like the sea, her color fresh, her forehead bland and unwrinkled. But she was not the woman whose woes had made copy for a thousand newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, whose sufferings had roused the storm of execration which had made the honest name of Aylmer a byword of dishonor and reproach. No, this was not his cousin Landon's wife. And yet? Feature for feature, line for line, she reminded him of the woman whose daintiness he remembered among the massed decorations of that New York cathedral those years ago. He sought bluntly for an explanation. "I, too, am John Aylmer," he said quietly. "Who are you?" The sudden thrill of surprise with which she clutched the child to her tightened the reins. The gray backed a step; it was as if horse and rider were alike repelled by his question. She stared at him with a sudden fierce aversion which was undisguised. "You are Landon's cousin--you?" she cried. He bowed his head. "I have that misfortune," he answered quietly. At the form of his answer a tinge of relief woke in her eyes, but they still watched him with incredulity and suspicion. "He--he has sent you?" she demanded. "You bring other proposals, or threats?" He smiled gravely. "We have shared nothing, except a club, he and I," he explained. "I have not set eyes on him for over a year." She still watched him alertly, debatingly, and still with mistrust. "How did you come here, and why?" she asked. "I am a member of the Tent Club," he answered. "I am in garrison at Gibraltar. I could not get leave till yesterday afternoon and I waited in Tangier to accompany Captain Rattier, whose ship is in harbor. Have I sufficiently explained myself?" She hesitated. "You have not seen your cousin for over a year? Perhaps you are in correspondence with him?" He showed signs of impatience. "We have not exchanged half a dozen letters in our lives!" he said emphatically. The lines of her face remained unsoftened. Her fierce grip on the child's shoulder did not relax. "And this Frenchman--this Captain Rattier?" she asked. "What of him?" His eyebrows expressed the intensity of his amazement.