An hour later, I was shown for the third time into the study of Dr. Schuyler at Elizabeth. He was sitting at his desk, just as I had found him once before.
"Ah, Mr. Lester," he began.
"Dr. Schuyler," I interrupted, "I've a photograph here which I'm very anxious for you to see. This is it—whose do you think it is?"
He took it with a glance of astonishment, moved over to the table, and held it beneath the rays of the lamp.
"Why," he faltered, "why—it reminds me very strongly of young Boyd Endicott, as he was when I knew him, thirty years ago."
My heart leaped.
"As a matter of fact, Dr. Schuyler," I said, "it's a photograph of Burr Curtiss, as he was ten years ago."
He stared at me for a moment without understanding, then I saw the light of comprehension in his eyes, and he sank heavily back into his chair.
"Poor woman!" he murmured hoarsely. "Poor woman!"
And all the way back to New York, I was wondering which of the women he had meant. Which was the more to be pitied—the woman who, thirty years before, had been whirled away from her lover by a trick of fortune; or the younger one, innocent and unsuspecting, discovering, only at the last moment, the horrible abyss yawning at her feet?