“Who is she?  In what way do you mean?”

“I mean that you and I know her better under another name.”

“What name is that?”

“Herbert.”

“Herbert!” Austin repeated the word, dazed with astonishment.

“Yes, Mrs. Herbert of Paul Street, Helen Vaughan of earlier adventures unknown to me.  You had reason to recognize the expression of her face; when you go home look at the face in Meyrick’s book of horrors, and you will know the sources of your recollection.”

“And you have proof of this?”

“Yes, the best of proof; I have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or shall we say Mrs. Herbert?”

“Where did you see her?”

“Hardly in a place where you would expect to see a lady who lives in Ashley Street, Piccadilly.  I saw her entering a house in one of the meanest and most disreputable streets in Soho.  In fact, I had made an appointment, though not with her, and she was precise to both time and place.”

“All this seems very wonderful, but I cannot call it incredible.  You must remember, Villiers, that I have seen this woman, in the ordinary adventure of London society, talking and laughing, and sipping her coffee in a commonplace drawing-room with commonplace people.  But you know what you are saying.”

“I do; I have not allowed myself to be led by surmises or fancies.  It was with no thought of finding Helen Vaughan that I searched for Mrs. Beaumont in the dark waters of the life of London, but such has been the issue.”

“You must have been in strange places, Villiers.”

“Yes, I have been in very strange places.  It would have been useless, you know, to go to Ashley Street, and ask Mrs. Beaumont to give me a short sketch of her previous history.  No; assuming, as I had to assume, that her record was not of the cleanest, it would be pretty certain that at some previous time she must have moved in circles not quite so refined as her present ones.  If you see mud at the top of a stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom.  I went to the bottom.  I have always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my amusement, and I found my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very useful.  It is, perhaps, needless to say that my friends had never heard the name of Beaumont, and as I had never seen the lady, and was quite unable to describe her, I had to set to work in an indirect way.  The people there know me; I have been able to do some of them a service now and again, so they made no difficulty about giving their information; they were aware I had no communication direct or indirect with Scotland Yard.  I had to cast out a good many lines, though, before I got what I wanted, and when I landed the fish I did not for a moment suppose it was my fish.  But I listened to what I was told out of a constitutional liking for useless information, and I found myself in possession of a very curious story, though, as I imagined, not