"Well, no, I did not! True, he seemed entirely indifferent as to how the money of his future wife was settled; indeed I could not help feeling that he was culpably careless about the whole matter. But even so I had one or two very disagreeable interviews with him. You see, Senator Burton, the man was madly in love; he had persuaded poor Nancy to be married at once—and by at once I mean within a fortnight of their engagement. He seemed strangely afraid of losing her, and I keenly resented this feeling on his part, for a more loyal little soul doesn't live. She has quite a nice fortune, you know, and for my part I should have liked her to marry some honest country gentleman in her own country—not an artist living in Paris."
"You don't attach much importance to love, Mr. Stephens?"
The lawyer laughed. "Quite enough!" he exclaimed. "Love causes more trouble in the world than everything else put together—at any rate it does to members of my profession. But to return to poor Nancy. She's a fascinating little creature!" He shot a quick glance at Senator Burton, but the latter only said cordially:—
"Yes, as fascinating as she's pretty!"
"Well, she had plenty of chances of making a good marriage—but no one touched her heart till this big, ugly fellow came along. So of course I had to make the best of it!" He waited a moment and then went on. "I ought to tell you that at my suggestion Dampier took out a large insurance policy on his own life: I didn't think it right that he should bring, as it were, nothing into settlement, the more so that Nancy had insisted, on her side, that all her money should go to him at her death, and that whether they had any children or not! You know what women are?" he shrugged his shoulders.
"If that be so," observed the Senator, "then money can have had nothing to do with his disappearance."
"I'm not so sure of that! In fact I've been wondering uneasily during the last few days whether, owing to his being an artist, and to his having lived so much abroad, John Dampier could have been foolish enough to suppose that in the case of his disappearance the insurance money would be paid over to Mrs. Dampier. That, of course, would be one important reason why he should wish to obliterate himself as completely as he seems to have done. I need hardly tell you, Mr. Senator, that the Insurance Office would laugh in my face if I were to try and make them pay. Why, years will have to elapse before our courts would even consider the probability of death."
"I now understand your view," said the Senator gravely. "But even if it be the true solution, it does not explain the inexplicable difference between Mrs. Dampier's statement and that of the Poulains—I mean, their statements as to what happened the night Mr. and Mrs. Dampier arrived in Paris."
"No," said the lawyer reluctantly. "I admit that to me this is the one inexplicable part of the whole story. And I also confess that as to that one matter I find it impossible to make up my mind. If I had not known poor little Nancy all her life, I should believe, knowing what women are capable of doing if urged thereto by pride or pain—I should believe, I say, that she had made up this strange story to account for her husband's having left her! I could tell you more than one tale of a woman having deceived not only her lawyer, but, later, a judge and a jury, as to such a point of fact. But from what I know of Mrs. Dampier she would be quite incapable of inventing, or perhaps what is quite as much to the purpose, of keeping up such a deception."
"From something my daughter said," observed Senator Burton, "I think you have been trying to persuade the poor little lady to go back to England?"