does not give herself the airs of a clever woman. But you would not have doubted it if you had known her five years ago.”

He was in one of those moods of almost embarrassing frankness, during which the only thing possible was to sit and listen quietly, with such sparing comment as would content him.

“I dare say,” he continued, “it will seem almost incredible to you, who have never heard her say more than is absolutely necessary, but she was one of the most brilliant talkers I have ever met, and four years ago she wrote a book which took London by storm. If I were to tell you the _nom de plume_ under which she wrote, you would be afraid of her, for it became at once a sort of proverb for daring of thought and expression. People who did not know her made a bogy of her, and many people who did looked with a sort of superstitious awe upon this slight fair woman who dared to write out what she thought and believed. But they had no idea what a sensitive nature lay under the almost masculine intellect. We had a boy then--his voice seemed to tremble a little--two years older than Haidee. The two children had been left in the country--in the best of care, mind--while my wife and I spent the season in town; it was a duty she owed to society then, as one of its brightest ornaments. We heard that the boy was not well; but we had no idea that his illness was serious. I assure you, Miss Christie--and he spoke with touching earnestness--that, if my wife had known there was the slightest danger, she would have flown to her child’s side without a thought of the pleasures and excitements she was leaving. Well--I can scarcely speak of it even now--the child died, after only two days’ illness, away from us. It was on her return from a ball that my wife heard of it. She sank down into a chair, dumb and shivering, without a word or a tear. When at last we succeeded in rousing her from this state, she took off her beautiful jewels--you have heard she was an heiress--and flung them from her with a shudder of disgust. She has never looked at them since.”

He paused for a few minutes, and I sat waiting for him to continue, too much interested to say much.

“I hoped that the depression into which she sank would wear off; but, instead, it only grew deeper. I have told you before that by an arrangement on our marriage our settled home was in the country; after her boy’s death, my wife would never even visit town again. When Mona was born, just before we came to this place, a change came, but not the change I had expected. I had hoped she would reawaken to interest in life, and perhaps, if 

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