“Good night, Miss Pendennis,” he said in a low voice, adding, in French, “Will you give me a flower as souvenir of our first meeting?”

She glanced at her posy, selected a spray of scarlet geranium, and presented it to him with a smile, and a word that I did not catch.

He looked at her more intently than ever as he took it.

“A thousand thanks, mademoiselle. I understand well,” he said, with a queer thrill in his voice, as of suppressed excitement.

As she passed on I heard him mutter in French: “The symbol! Then it is she! Yes, without doubt it is she!”


CHAPTER III

THE BLOOD-STAINED PORTRAIT