"I believe that most of you know Mrs.De Peyster, at least from her pictures." "Mrs.De Peyster!" cried the staggered crowd.

"Mrs.De Peyster herself!" "Mrs.De Peyster herself," repeated Mr.Pyecroft in his grave voice.
"You are surprised, but not more so than the rest of us." "But that other Mrs.De Peyster--the one the funeral is for ?" asked Mr.Mayfair.

"Who is she ?" "That, gentlemen, is as great a mystery to us as to any of you," said Mr.Pyecroft.
"But how the--but how did it all happen ?" ejaculated Mr.Mayfair.
"That is what I am going to tell you," Mr.Pyecroft answered.
Mrs.De Peyster struggled up.
"Don't--don't!" she besought him wildly.
Mr.Pyecroft pressed her back into her chair, and held her there with an arm that was like a brace of steel.
"You see, gentlemen," he remarked sympathetically, "how this business has upset her." "Yes! But the explanation ?" "Immediately--word for word, as Mrs.De Peyster has just now told us," said he.
"Oh!" moaned Mrs.De Peyster.
Olivetta and Matilda gazed at Mr.Pyecroft with ghastly, loose-lipped faces; Judge Harvey and Jack and Mary stared at him with an amazed suspense which they could hardly mask; and Miss Gardner, with whom he had not yet made his peace, breathlessly awaited the next move of this incomprehensible husband of hers.

Mr.Pyecroft kept his eyes, for the most part, upon the shrewd, fraud-penetrating features of the unfoilable Mr.Mayfair--his own countenance the most truthful that son of Adam ever wore.
"What Mrs.De Peyster has said is really very simple.

As you know, she left Paris two or three weeks ago on a long motor trip.