She held it in her hand. There were two halves of one of Dick Harborne's visiting-cards--signed and torn across in a similar manner to those pieces which had been handed for the coroner's inspection. Each half bore a number on its back, while on the front, as she placed them together, was Harborne's name, both printed and written. For a long time she had her eyes fixed upon it. Her brows narrowed, and in her eyes showed a distinct expression of terror. "Yes," she whispered; "I was a fool--a great fool to have dared so much--to have listened, and to have consented to go across to Bremen. But no one knows, except Dick--and he, alas!--he's dead! Therefore who can possibly know?--no one." She held the halves of the torn card between her fingers for some moments, looking at them. Then, sighing deeply, she rose with sudden impulse and, crossing the room, took up a box of matches. Striking one, she applied it to the corners of the half cards and held the latter until the blue flame crept upwards and consumed them. Then she cast them from her into the grate. It was the end of her romance with that man who had been struck that cowardly blow in secret--Richard Harborne. She stood gazing upon the tiny piece of tinder in the fender, immovable as a statue. Her dark brows slowly narrowed, her white, even teeth were set, her small hands clenched, as, beneath her breath, she uttered a fierce vow--a hard, bitter vow of vengeance. Before her arose the vision of her good-looking lover, the man with the dark, intense eyes--Ralph Ansell. And then the memory of the dead Dick Harborne instantly faded from her mind. Her romance with Dick had been but a passing fancy. She had never really loved him. Indeed, he had never spoken to her of love. Yet he had fascinated her, and in his presence she had found herself impelled by his charm and his easy-going cosmopolitanism, so that she had listened to him and obeyed, even against her own will. She recollected vividly that adventurous journey to Bremen--recalled it all as some half-forgotten, misty dream. She could feel now the crisp crackling of those Bank of England notes which she had carried secreted in her cheap little dressing-case with its electro-plated fittings. She remembered, too, the face of the stranger, the fat, sandy-haired German, whom she had met by appointment upon a flat country road a mile distant from the city towards Ottersberg--how he had given her, as credential, one of those pieces of visiting-card, together with a bulky letter, and how, in return, she had handed him the English bank-notes. Then there was the mysterious packet she had subsequently given to Dick, when she had met him one evening and dined with him at the Trocadero. Then he had thanked her, and declared his great indebtedness.