I thought that before affliction visited her Madame de Staemer must have
been a vivacious and a beautiful woman. Her vivacity remained and much
of her beauty, so that it was difficult to believe her snow-white hair
to be a product of nature. Again and again I found myself regarding it
as a powdered coiffure of the Pompadour period and wondering why Madame
wore no patches.

That a deep and sympathetic understanding existed between herself and
Colonel Menendez was unmistakable. More than once I intercepted glances
from the dark eyes of Madame which were lover-like, yet laden with a
profound sorrow. She was playing a role, and I was convinced that
Harley knew this. It was not merely a courageous fight against
affliction on the part of a woman of the world, versed in masking her
real self from the prying eyes of society, it was a studied performance
prompted by some deeper motive.

She dressed with exquisite taste, and to see her seated there amid her
cushions, gesticulating vivaciously, one would never have supposed that
she was crippled. My admiration for her momentarily increased, the more
so since I could see that she was sincerely fond of Val Beverley, whose
every movement she followed with looks of almost motherly affection.
This was all the more strange as Madame de Staemer whose age, I
supposed, lay somewhere on the sunny side of forty, was of a type which
expects, and wins, admiration, long after the average woman has ceased
to be attractive.

One endowed with such a temperament is as a rule unreasonably jealous
of youth and good looks in another. I could not determine if Madame's
attitude were to be ascribed to complacent self-satisfaction or to a
nobler motive. It sufficed for me that she took an unfeigned joy in the