Another curious circumstance is the readiness with which the American
newspaper tumbles to these frauds. The yellow press especially luxuriates
in them; woodcuts the callow bedizened bride, the jaded game-worn groom;
dilates upon the big money interchanged; glows over the tin-plate stars
and imaginary garters and pinchbeck crowns; and keeping the pictorial
paraphernalia in cold but not forgotten storage waits for the inevitable
scandal, and then, with lavish exaggeration, works the old story over
again.

These newspapers ring all the sensational changes. Now it is the wondrous
beauty with the cool million, who, having married some illegitimate of
a minor royal house, will probably be the next Queen of Rigmarolia, and
now--ever increasing the dose--it is the ten-million-dollar widow who is
going to marry the King of Pontarabia's brother, and may thus aspire to be
one day Empress of Sahara.

Old European travelers can recall many funny and sometimes melancholy
incidents--episodes--histories--of which they have witnessed the
beginning and the end, carrying the self-same denouement and lesson.



IV


As there are women and women there are many kinds of adventuresses; not all
of them wicked and detestable. But, good or bad, the lot of the adventuress
is at best a hard lot. Be she a girl with a future or a woman with a past
she is still a woman, and the world can never be too kind to its women--the