“I am summoned unexpectedly to Paris on business,--and the chances are that I shall not see you again. All that I have told you is absolutely true, no matter how much you may disbelieve the story. I am the woman you once pretended to love, and whose life you spoiled,--and I am the woman whom you love now, or (to put it roughly) whom you desire, but whose life you can never spoil again. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’--and when you read this, it is probable I shall have gone away, which is a good thing for your peace, and--safety. You have a wife,--you are the ‘father of a family’--be content with the domestic happiness you have chosen, and fulfil the responsibilities you have accepted. Good-bye!--and think of me no more except as the ‘old’ “Diana.” Now when this letter reached Captain the Honourable Reginald Cleeve at his club, to which it was addressed, and where he had dined on the evening of the day it was posted, which was the next but one to the day of his interview with Diana, it was brought to him in the smoking-room, and as his eyes ran over it he uttered an involuntary oath of such force that even men inured to violent language looked up, amused and inquisitive. “What’s up?” asked an acquaintance seated near him. “Oh, nothing! A dun!” he answered,--then, calming down, he lit a cigar. After a few puffs at it he took up a newspaper--read a paragraph or two--then laid it down. “By the way,” he said, to the man who had spoken--“the famous beauty--Diana May--is off to Paris.” These words created a certain stir in the smoking-room. Several men looked up. “Oh, well! All lovely women go to Paris for their clothes!” “Pardon!” said a dark-visaged young man, coming forward from a corner where he had been writing a letter, and speaking with a foreign accent--“Did I hear you mention a lady’s name--Diana May?” Cleeve glanced him over with military frigidity. “I did mention that name--yes.” “Excuse me!--I am a stranger in London, and a friend has made me an honorary member of this club for a short time--I knew a Miss Diana May in Geneva--permit me----” And he proffered his visiting-card, on which was inscribed: “_Marchese Luigi Farnese._” “I met Miss May,” he continued, “at the house of a very distinguished Russian scientist, Dr. Féodor Dimitrius. She had come from England on a visit to his mother, so I was informed. But I had an idea at the time that she had arrived in answer to an advertisement he had put in the Paris newspapers for a lady assistant,--of course I may have been wrong. She was a very bright, rather clever middle-aged person----” “The Miss May I spoke of just now,” interpolated Cleeve, “is quite a young girl--not more than eighteen or nineteen.” “Oh, then!”--and Farnese made a profoundly apologetic bow--“it cannot be the same. The lady I met was--ah!--thirty-five or so--perhaps forty. She left Geneva very suddenly, and I have been trying to trace her ever since.”