“What kind of fellow was the husband?  You got his name, of course?”

“Daker—­Herbert Daker.  Man of good family.  A most agreeable, taking, travelled companion; light and bright as——­”

“The light-hearted Janus of Lamb,” Bertram interrupted, his words dancing lightly as the beads in his glass.

The association of Daker with Wainwright struck me sharply.  For how genial and accomplished a man was the criminal! a stranger conglomeration of graces and sins never dwelt within one human breast.  I was started on wild speculations.

“I’ve set you dreaming.  You found no clue to a history?”

“None.  She had been married three months to Daker.  She was a poor girl left alone, with a few hundreds, I apprehend.  She would not say much.  A runaway match, I concluded.  Not a word about her family.  When I left Paris, after dinner, he had made no sign.  She promised to write to me to Constantinople.  I gave her my address in town.  I told her Arthur’s here would reach me.  But not a word, my dear boy.  That woman had the soul of truth in voice and look, or I never read Eve’s face yet.”

“Ha! ha!” Bertram laughed.  “I wish I had not got beyond the risk of being snared by the un-gloving of a hand.  You only pass through, I live in Paris.”

“Paris or London, a heart may be read, if you will only take the trouble.  I shall never hear, in all human probability, what has become of Mrs. Daker, or her husband; she may be an intrigante, and he a card-sharper now; all I know, and will swear, is that she loved that man to distraction then, and it was a girl in love.”

“And he?”

Bertram’s suspicions seemed to be fixed on Daker, whom he had never seen; although I had described his eminently prepossessing qualities.

“I can’t understand why you should suspect Daker of villany, as I see you do, Bertram.”

“I tell you he was a most accomplished, prepossessing villain, my dear Q.M.  Your upper class villains are always prepossessing.  Manners are as necessary to them as a small hand to a pickpocket.”

“Sharp, but unfair—­only partly true, like all sweeping generalizations.  I think, as I hope, that the wife found the husband, and that they are nestling in some Italian retreat.”

“And never had the grace to write you a word!  No, no, you say they had manners.  That, at any rate, then, is not the solution of the mystery.”

Bertram was right here.  Then what had become of Mrs. Daker?  Daker, if alive, was a scoundrel, and one who had contrived to take care of himself.  But that sweet country face!  Here was a heart that might break, but would never harden.

“Mystery it must and will remain, I suppose.”

“One of many,” was Bertram’s gay reply.  “How they overload these matches with sulphur!”

He was lighting his cigar.  His phaeton was at the door.  A globule of Chartreuse; a compliment for the chef, a bow to the dame de comptoir, and we were on our way to the Bois, at a brisk trot, for the great world had cleared off to act tragedy and comedy by the ocean shore, or the invalid’s well, or the gambler’s green baize.