undesirable Frenchwoman; and now when I saw her smiling at the tall
white girl on the _Laconia_, I had thought for an instant that Biddy
and her stepdaughter might be in flight together. O'Brien was a
drunkard, as well as a demagogue; and not long after Brigit's flitting
with him there was a scandal about the accepting of bribes from
politicians on the opposing side, apparently his greatest enemies; but
a minor scandal compared to what came some years afterward. O'Brien's
name was implicated in the blowing up of the _World-Republican_
Building in Washington, and the wrecking of Senator Marlowe's special
train after his speech against socialist interests, but the coward
turned informer against his friends and associates in the secret
society of which he had been a leader, and saved himself by sending
them to prison. From that day until his death he lived the life of a
hunted animal flying from the hounds of vengeance. Brigit stood by him
in spite of threats against her life as well as his, and the life of
the child. Since then, though she answered none of our letters, we had
heard rumours. The girl Esme, whom the avengers had threatened to
kidnap, was supposed to be hidden in some convent-school in Europe. As
for Brigit, she was said to be training for a hospital nurse: reported
to have become a missionary in India, China, and one or two other
countries; seen on the music-hall stage, and traced to Johannesburg,
where she had married a diamond-merchant; yet here she was on board the
_Laconia_, unchanged in looks, or nature, and the guest of a much
paragraphed, much proposed to American heiress _en route_ to Egypt.

While Brigit was telling me the real story of her last two years, as
governess, companion, teacher of music, and journalist, Miss Gilder
regarded us sidewise from amid her bodyguard of young men. Evidently
she was dying to know who was the acquaintance her darling Biddy had
picked up in mid-Mediterranean the moment her back was turned; and at