CHAPTER XIII RELATES A STRANGE STORY
I stood before Lola, grieved at her distress.
Too well I knew, alas! how deeply she had suffered, of all the bitterness and remorse with which her young life was filled, blighted by an ever-present terror, her youth sapped and her ideas warped by living in an atmosphere of criminality.
Rapidly, as I took her little hands in unspoken sympathy, recollections of our strangely-made acquaintanceship ran through my memory, and before me arose a truly dramatic and impressive scene.
I had first seen Lola, two years before, seated alone at luncheon in the pretty salle-à-manger of the Hôtel d'Angleterre in Copenhagen. Many eyes were upon her because of her youth and beauty, and many men sitting at the various tables cast admiring glances at her.
I was with my friend, Jack Bellairs, and we were breaking our journey for a few days in the Danish capital, before going up to Norway salmon-fishing.
Jack first noted her, and drew my attention to the fact that she was alone. At the time, I knew nothing of the two men who were lunching together at another table at the further end of the room, and that the name of one of them was Jules Jeanjean.
The girl, we discovered from the concierge, had been living alone in the hotel for a month, and had become on very friendly terms with a certain very wealthy Hungarian lady, the Baroness Függer, of Budapest. She accompanied the Baroness everywhere, but the reason she was lunching alone that morning was because the Baroness was absent for the day at Elsinore.
During the next day or two we saw the stately old lady, whose chief delight seemed to be the ostentatious display of jewellery, constantly in Lola's company. The girl, though admired everywhere, treated all the men about her with utter unconcern, being most modest and reserved.