For the dead Numa Pompilius slept now with his fathers, in far away Merrie England, and--as is the wont--the mortuary inscriptions on his tomb recorded only his virtues.

But both his virtues and failings were of no greater weight now to a forgetful generation, which knew not the departed Joseph, than the drifted leaves in the garden alleys where the romance of the old still lingered in ghostly guise! "There were no birds in last year's nest," but the mysterious bungalow had been hastily arranged for the lovely successor to the vanished queen of a cobweb Paradise.

The bungalow, itself, was adroitly constructed with a special reference to seclusion as well as comfort.

An Indian Love's Labyrinth.
"Just the very place!" murmured Alan Hawke, as he hastened away to dress for the diner de famille, with his timorous secret foe, Hugh Johnstone.
"I wonder if my canny friend, in his humble days as Hugh Fraser, ever assisted at lespelits diners de Trianon here?
"Probably not, for friend Hugh was ever apter in squeezing the nimble rupee than in chanting sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow.

How the devil did he ever catch a wife, such as Valerie Delavigne must have been?
Either a case of purchase or starvation, I'll warrant!" Ram Lal Singh was growing dubious as to the perfect sweep of his hungry talons over Madame Louison's future expenditures.