He was wise enough to perceive the rareness and delicacy of her physical and mental organisation and temperament,--a temperament so finely strung as to make all other women seem gross and material beside her.

He felt and knew her to be both his moral and intellectual superior,--and this very fact rendered it impossible that he could ever master her mind and tame it down to the subservience of married life.

That dauntless spirit of hers would never bend to an inferior,--not even love (if she could feel it) would move her thus far.

And the man she had adventured across ocean to rescue--what was he?
She confessed that she had loved him, though that love was past.

And now she had set herself to watch night and day by his dead body (for dead he surely was in Rivardi's opinion) sparing no pains to recover what seemed beyond recovery; while one of the greatest mysteries of the whole mysterious affair was just this--How had she known the man's life was in danger?
All these questions Rivardi discussed with Don Aloysius, who listened to him patiently without committing himself to any reply.