travelled with her from San Francisco to England, and she had been
very good to him in illness, in distress of mind and in poverty,--for he
had been almost penniless in New York. When they landed at Liverpool
they were engaged as man and wife. He had told her all his affairs,
had given her the whole history of his life. This was before his
second journey to America, when Hamilton K. Fisker was unknown to him.
But she had told him little or nothing of her own life,--but that she
was a widow, and that she was travelling to Paris on business. When he
left her at the London railway station, from which she started for
Dover, he was full of all a lover's ardour. He had offered to go with
her, but that she had declined. But when he remembered that he must
certainly tell his friend Roger of his engagement, and remembered also
how little he knew of the lady to whom he was engaged, he became
embarrassed. What were her means he did not know. He did know that she
was some years older than himself, and that she had spoken hardly a
word to him of her own family. She had indeed said that her husband
had been one of the greatest miscreants ever created, and had spoken
of her release from him as the one blessing she had known before she
had met Paul Montague. But it was only when he thought of all this
after she had left him,--only when he reflected how bald was the story
which he must tell Roger Carbury,--that he became dismayed. Such had
been the woman's cleverness, such her charm, so great her power of
adaptation, that he had passed weeks in her daily company, with still
progressing intimacy and affection, without feeling that anything had
been missing.

He had told his friend, and his friend had declared to him that it was
impossible that he should marry a woman whom he had met in a railway
train without knowing something about her. Roger did all he could to
persuade the lover to forget his love,--and partially succeeded. It is