She finishes her soup, and pushes the plate away from her. "As long as I
live," she says, talking to herself.

"By Jove!" she says, starting up "why not?"

"Why not what?" I says.

"Nothing," she answers. "Get me an African telegraph form, and be quick
about it!"

I fetched it for her, and she wrote it and gave it to the porter then and
there; and, that done, she sat down and finished her dinner.

She was a bit short with me after that; so I judged it best to keep my
own place.

In the morning she got an answer that seemed to excite her, and that
afternoon she left; and the next I heard of her was a paragraph in the
newspaper, headed--"Death of the Marchioness of Appleford. Sad
accident." It seemed she had gone for a row on one of the Italian lakes
with no one but a boatman. A squall had come on, and the boat had
capsized. The boatman had swum ashore, but he had been unable to save
his passenger, and her body had never been recovered. The paper reminded
its readers that she had formerly been the celebrated tragic actress,
Caroline Trevelyan, daughter of the well-known Indian judge of that name.

It gave me the blues for a day or two--that bit of news. I had known her
from a baby as you might say, and had taken an interest in her. You can
call it silly, but hotels and restaurants seemed to me less interesting