Burgoyne glanced at the other thoughtfully. Rumor had it that Pendleton himself was very fond of Stephanie Mourraille before she married Harry Lorraine; but rumor often lied, and he had not been here to verify it himself. He knew that she was a handsome, dashing woman, somewhat self-willed and given to having her own way, but amenable to influence and altogether lovable. When he went away Lorraine was crazy about her and the courtship was at its height. A little later, while he was in Europe, he got cards to their marriage. Then suddenly, after a year and a half, a friend's letter told him, _inter alia_, that Stephanie Lorraine had run off with Garret Amherst--a man twice her age, and with a wife and four children--and that they were supposed to have gone to India. Four months ago he had encountered them in Paris--at the Café Laurent in the Champs Elysées; but when he started over to speak to them, they got up hurriedly and changed their table for one in a remote corner, so he took the hint and did not recognize them. "What in the devil possessed her?" he asked. "Amherst is not particularly attractive." "No--at least he is not attractive to the men--but they say he is the devil among the women, in a quiet way. I reckon it was his reputation that first caught Stephanie. After that he played her and--landed her. I didn't think, however, he would completely lose his head and run away with her." "Amherst always struck me as exceedingly cool and calculating," Burgoyne observed.--"Still, one can never tell what love will do!" "_Love!_" exclaimed Pendleton. "I wouldn't dignify it by any such name. Call it what it was!" "If you call it _that_ then why did they run away? They could have gratified it quite as well had they remained within the bounds of the conventional." "It was the conventional which hampered:--they wanted to be unrestrained in its enjoyment. When a man and a woman reach that state they're little better than insane." "I never took Stephanie to be one of that sort," Burgoyne reflected. "She wasn't--until Amherst played his usual game--and got caught in his own net. My idea of it is that she wouldn't yield until he proved his devotion by taking her away, and finally she got him so crazy he succumbed." "I fancy that both of them have regretted it sadly enough long since." "I'm sure of it. I understand that Amherst has made overtures to his wife looking to a reconciliation; and as he converted almost all his property before he left, she is considering whether a half loaf, with financial ease and Amherst, isn't to be preferred to no loaf, no money, and no Amherst. She's forty, you must remember, and not particularly good looking at that. She's not likely to have another chance, if she divorces him. So I'm betting she will permit him to return--_for the children's sake_." "And Stephanie?" asked Burgoyne. "There isn't any child there."