She was of that type of beauty which only the Latin races achieve, and it had been vouchsafed to her in the superlative degree. Her hair was black, beautiful, and there were masses of it. Her complexion was almost fair, but there was just enough of the olive tint to give to the red blood in her cheeks an added warmth. Her eyes were large, luminous, dreamy, or ablaze with eagerness or passion as the case might be. Her figure was perfect, her hands and her feet were “dreams for the contemplation of an artist,” her every motion was lithe, lissome, sinuous, catlike in the sense that she could not have been lacking in grace had she made the effort. Indeed, there was something about Juno’s every act which suggested the black leopard—and that was one of the aliases by which she had one time been known in Paris. Reduced to five words, Juno’s description was entirely comprehended by the expression: She was a beautiful woman.
Juno’s antecedents were no less aristocratic than Jimmy’s.
She, too, had been born and bred within the exclusiveness of the blue-blooded. Her father and her mother had worn titles of distinction; she had been given all the “advantages” when she was a child, and a young woman—she was that, still. She spoke many languages, and spoke each one so perfectly that it was a matter of indifference to her which one she made use of.
In the long-ago, when both had been respectable children, she and Jimmy had played together. Many years after that, when Jimmy had gone to the bad, and Juno had achieved an international reputation in her various lines, they met again—to drift apart as they had done in those early days.
After that there was another lapse of years during which Jimmy had visited South Africa, had married, had drifted to New York with his wife, had been sent to Sing Sing, had been divorced, and then, according to official reports concerning him, had died and was buried on an island in Long Island Sound. During these years Juno had served the Nihilists of Russia, the Socialists of Germany, the secret societies of other nations—during which she had been a spy, also, for these several governments, and had won an international reputation, and become almost everything that a beautiful woman should not be.
But the continent of Europe, and the British Isles, had grown too hot for her. She came to America—and almost the first person she encountered after leaving the steamer that brought her here, was Bare-Faced Jimmy. And this happened within the year that followed upon his supposed death.
“Two souls with but a single thought,” although by no means a sentimental one, might well have applied to them; the single thought being their desire to victimize the rest of mankind.
“Let’s strike up a partnership, Juno,” Jimmy had said to her. “Together, with your craftiness and my skill, nothing can stop us. Let’s strike up a partnership;” and she had replied:
“Very good, Jimmy; but a minister, not a lawyer, shall draw the contract.”
And so they were married—strangely enough, under their right names, too.