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174 across the Place Vendôme. Yes, she was no less lovely than of old; her beauty had ripened, not changed. There was a more thoughtful look, there were traces even of care and sorrow; but those indications only heightened the spirituality of the face.

O, what worship, what devotion he could have given her now in the bloom of her womanhood, in the maturity of his manhood—such whole-hearted, thoughtful love as youth can never give! And it was not to be. They were to be apart for ever, they two. They were to be strangers; since this assumption of friendship, to which he had tried to reconcile himself, was, after all, but a mockery. Chivalrous feeling might keep his thoughts pure, his honour unspotted; but in his heart of hearts he loved his first love as passionately as in the days of his youth.

And to-day, for the first time, he had heard her husband address her coldly and curtly, with a touch of anger even.

He was not likely to forget that curt, impatient tone, and the frown that had accentuated it.

"I was very glad to get your letter," she said presently. "Tell me once more with your own lips that you have ceased to suspect my cousin."

"Ceased to suspect would, perhaps, be too strong an expression. But in the discoveries I have made relating to that murdered girl there is certainly nothing that in any way points to Mr. Grahame."

"I wish you would tell me all you have discovered—how near you are to clearing up the mystery."

"I fear I am still very far from that. It is the history of a remote crime which occupies me at the present, and I hope in that history of the past to find the clue to poor Léonie's death. I shall know more in a few days."

"How so?"

"You saw my advertisement in the Times. If that advertisement be not answered within a week, I shall conclude that the man who was to have met Léonie Lemarque on the morning of July 5th has some part in the guilt of her death."

"And then—"

"And then it will be my business or Mr. Distin's business to find that man."

They were at the door of the hotel by this time, and here Heathcote bade Dora adieu.

"We shall meet again before you leave Paris, I daresay," he said. "If Wyllard wants me he will know where to find me."

"You are not going home yet?"

"No; I am likely to stay here some little time."

"And poor Hilda is longing to have you back at The Spaniards. She will not see Bothwell while you are away.