"Has he no friends?"

"Do I count as nothing at all?"

"I mean no others—no wife or family?"

"He has a wife, and she has a daughter. That is all I know. They have been parted through some cause. Why do you ask? Do you know him?"

"No, I do not know him."

Do you know the wife? Please tell me, for at his request I am trying to find her, and I have failed."

"Yes, I know her," she said painfully and slowly. "You need search no longer. She will be at your hotel to-night."

He started. Then he said: "I'm glad of that. How did you come to know? Are you friends?"

Though her face was turned from him resolutely, he saw a flush creep up her neck to her hair.

"We are not friends," she said vaguely. "But I know that she is coming to see her daughter."