strangely at one another.

"And you would have married MARY!" the woman commented upon the issue
of the fight. It was both a taunt and an accusation.

The man lifted his brows questioningly, as at a loss to comprehend her
meaning.

"Has that anything to do with it?' he asked. 'I don't see the
connection."

The sentences were short, but signified many things.




CHAPTER XXIV.



Frances Ewing was a shady name thereafter, to those "in the know".
Pennycuick blood and pride notwithstanding, she seemed to lose her own
sustaining self-respect when she lost the respect of the man she loved
--when he showed her with such barbarous and uncompromising candour the
essential difference between a mistress and a wife. Of course, she "got
over" that grievous affair, which, for a time, broke whatever heart she
had to break. Her freedom and her money, her youth and her beauty, were
still hers, and she made the most of them; and that most was a great
deal. In her cosmopolitan sets she was a popular and distinguished
figure. From one fashionably rowdy Continental resort to another she