“This gentleman took the woman you saved to a boarding-house near by. I confess something of curiosity, and a desire to hear her story direct, led my steps there after breakfast. Then again I had an idea she might be poor and needy, and, if so, I might second your deed. At any rate, I walked down and found her. She glowed with enthusiasm over your kindness, and described the whole scene so eloquently that I could, in imagination, see you hanging from that roof with one arm and supporting her--you who professed to be all in a tremble at the prospect of climbing the Ferris wheel. I can understand that now, my dear fellow, and know full well it was not timidity that kept you back, but the sturdy desire to baffle Aroun Scutari in the climax of his work. “Enough of that. Now comes the surprising part of the business. When I talked with the woman I saw she was much more refined than her position would indicate. She asked questions, too, and eager ones they were; questions about Samson Cereal, questions that aroused my suspicions. “Then I turned the tables and she confided her story to me, at least the outlines of it. You could have knocked me down with a feather, I was so astonished. Of course, you have never even guessed her identity--how could you?” “I don’t know. You mention Samson Cereal--a wife of his turned up last night; perhaps she is another,” carelessly. “Claude, you wizard, go up head.” “What! is it a fact?” demands the amazed Wycherley. “As true as gospel. His first wife. He was divorced from her before he went abroad, and I have reason to believe she is the mother of this bold John Phœnix!” CHAPTER XV. HEARD AT THE SHERMAN TABLE-D’HÔTE. No wonder Wycherley stops eating and looks at his companion in a dazed way. The announcement made by the other is of a nature to take his breath away. What sort of man can Samson Cereal be? It is quite enough, he thinks, to have one wife, who was supposed to be dead, turn up, but two of a kind--quite staggers him. “Wait a moment, Aleck, until I collect my wits. Really, you have knocked them helter-skelter with such a remarkable assertion. There, now, go on with the circus. This woman, whom I had the good fortune to assist, was once the wife of the old speculator, you say.” “It is true. They were married when he was a young man--just at the close of the War. I believe he met her in Kentucky, for she was a native of Lexington, and called a beauty, and I imagine somewhat of a flirt. “Some years later a child was born to them, a boy. Samson began to suspect his wife of being in love with a dashing Southerner. He was a plain man himself, you know, and Adela--that is her name--admits that he gave her no cause for such treachery. She lays it all to the fact of her own mother dying when she was a child, and of her father’s lax ways of living, and that she had never known a woman friend whose advice could have saved her.