"Don't know. It's a Mrs. Merrydew, from Sacramento. Expecting her
husband on the next steamer."

"Humph! You'll have to be rather careful about these solitary married
women. We don't want another scandal, you know."

"She asked for you by name, sir, and I thought you might know her,"
returned the clerk.

"Very well. I'll go up."

He sent a waiter ahead to announce him, and leisurely mounted the
stairs. No. 56 was the sitting-room of a private suite on the first
floor. The waiter was holding the door open. As he approached it a
faint perfume from the interior made him turn pale. But he recovered his
presence of mind sufficiently to close the door sharply upon the waiter
behind him.

"Jim," said a voice which thrilled him.

He looked up and beheld what any astute reader of romance will have
already suspected--the woman to whom he believed he owed his ruin in
San Francisco. She was as beautiful and alluring as ever, albeit she was
thinner and more spiritual than he had ever seen her. She was tastefully
dressed, as she had always been, a certain style of languorous silken
deshabille which she was wont to affect in better health now became her
paler cheek and feverishly brilliant eyes. There was the same opulence
of lace and ornament, and, whether by accident or design, clasped around
the slight wrist of her extended hand was a bracelet which he remembered
had swept away the last dregs of his fortune.