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 her as Ysola de Valera. She is beautiful, in her golden doll way. You think so?” Then, ere I had time to reply: “She told you, I suppose, eh?”

“She told me,” I replied with a certain embarrassment, “that she had met you some years ago in Cuba.”

“Ah, yes, although I told the fat Inspector it was not so. How we lie, we women! And of course she told you in what relation I stood to Juan Menendez?”

“She did not, Madame de Stämer.”

“No—no? Well, it was nice of her. No matter. I will tell you. I was his mistress.”

She spoke without bravado, but quite without shame, seeming to glory in the statement.

“I met him in Paris,” she continued, half closing her eyes. “I was staying at the house of my sister, and my sister, you understand, was married to Juan’s cousin. That is how we met. I was married. Yes, it is true. But in France our parents find our husbands and our lovers find our hearts. Yet sometimes these marriages are happy. To me this good thing had not happened, and in the moment when Juan’s hand touched mine a living fire entered into my heart and it has been burning ever since; burning—burning, always till I die.

“Very well, I am a shameless woman, yes. But I have lived, and I have loved, and I am content. I went with him to Cuba, and from Cuba to another island where he had estates, and the name of which I shall not pronounce, because it hurts me so, even yet. There he set eyes upon Ysola de Valera, the daughter of his manager, and, pouf!”

She shrugged and snapped her fingers.

“He was like that, you understand? I knew it well. They did not call him Devil Menendez for nothing. There was a scene, a dreadful scene, and after that