who the stranger was.

"I must go in," she said. "It is late."

"Tell me one thing. I want it for my picture--as a key to the mind of the
girl. What did she say at that painful meeting in the woods--to the man?"

Mrs. Detlor looked at him as if she would read him through and through.
Presently she drew a ring from her finger slowly and gave it to him,
smiling bitterly.

"Read inside. That is what she said."

By the burning end of his cigar he read, "You told a lie."

At another hotel a man sat in a window looking out on the esplanade. He
spoke aloud.

"'You told a lie,' was all she said, and as God's in heaven I've never
forgotten I was a liar from that day to this."




CHAPTER II.

THE MEETING.


The next morning George Hagar was early at the pump-room. He found it