They were so young, so absorbed, so oblivious....
He had forgotten Jinny Jeffries. So too,—not for the first time, alas!—had Ryder. Now her clear voice from the doorway made them start.
"You might present me, Jack."
Ryder turned, so did the girl in the painted case, and her eyes widened with a startled surprise. The doorway had not been within her vision.
Jinny was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the knob she was to guard, her figure still rigid with astonishment.
"I didn't know you—you dug them up—alive," she said with a quiver of uncertain humor.
"My dear Jinny, I had for—Miss Jeffries, let me present you to Mademoiselle Delcassé," said Jack gravely. "I know that you met her the day of her reception—"
Only in that moment did Jinny place the haunting recollection.
"But she was burned—she was killed," she protested, shaken now with excitement.
"She was not burned—although there was a fire. The man who called himself her husband pretended she was killed in order to save his pride. For she escaped from him. And he tried to get her back, setting another man, a false father, after her with lying witnesses—Oh, it's a long story!—so I had to hide her in this case."