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 "Her marriage to you was annulled; she was Bolton s wife, she had your child. . . . I knew nothing of this myself. I merely had attended to the annulment proceedings and since had been forwarding her income, addressing Mrs. Fidelia Bolton through a London bank. I supposed she was living with him when he was in England, though I might have suspected differently from the fact that often she acknowledged my letters from Devon. The baby was born at Torquay. . . . Fidelia was delighted with her; she seemed to have hoped for a boy but she was delighted with the little girl."

"What is she like?" asked David. "Where is she?"

"At my hotel with Mrs. Jessop."

"Here?" cried David. "Here?"

Alice heard from David that he was coming home at noon. Mr. Jessop was here with news that Fidelia had died in England, David had said and had added he had much more to tell her. Fidelia was dead. It was a statement which bore to Alice no reality. It was wholly different from the news which had come that Bolton was dead. Never had he been more than a name and a statement of fact when he lived; it required nothing more than another statement of fact to let you know that he was dead. But Fidelia bore the flower of life itself; to think of Fidelia was to think of color, warmth and stir; no one could think of Fidelia, dead.

There was a mistake, Alice was sure. There had been a mistake years ago about Bolton, who had had no such life as Fidelia, yet who was alive when people