I saw Byng's wife some three years later. I had heard disquieting news of Byng & Potter, now incorporated, but having confidence in Howard's ability to pull through almost anything, I dismissed the matter from my mind, for I was immersed with intensely interesting responsibilities of my own. Eight years' successful work in the Counterfeit Division had laid the foundation. I was now going to Europe in a more confidential capacity even than ambassadors might enjoy! The evening before sailing I was entering my hotel, much preoccupied, when I was plucked anxiously by the sleeve. It took more than a glance to recognize Norma Byng.

"I have been looking for you a long time," she began, suppressing her intense excitement. "You—you—I want to see you so badly——"

She actually clung to me as I led her to a secluded spot in the ladies' parlor. Her excitement was unfeigned and I was anxious to learn what had happened to Howard Byng's beautiful wife. Manifestly she was in distress. Firm of step and courageous, she was still comely, but in severely plain attire. There was an absence of deep red in her lips, but the upward curves at the corners of her pretty mouth were there, contradicting the sadness and evident weariness of soul that showed in her eyes.

"Mr. Wood," she began, still struggling for calmness after we were seated, "I have fruitlessly used every means to find you, and to come upon you so unexpectedly quite upsets me. Perhaps—perhaps I was rude. I believe—I know you are big enough to understand," she said, her eyes now devouringly aflame.

I must have looked greatly perplexed, and, before I could formulate a reply, she exclaimed:

"You are the one man Howard trusted implicitly—don't you know—haven't you heard?"

"No, I have heard nothing authentic of him since our dinner party at the Waldorf three years ago," I managed to say.

"Oh, most terrible things have happened since then. Will you—have you time for me to tell you?" she pleaded, her hands clasped imploringly. "Can't we," she added, anxiously glancing over to a spooning couple by the window, "can't we go to some less public place?"

"It is time for dinner; if you will join me I will find a place where we will not be disturbed."

"Oh, I will be so glad! I must tell someone who will understand and—and maybe you can do something," she added, searching my eyes with a quick glance.

It was early evening and I was able to get my favorite waiter and alcove seat in the dining-room.

"Now, Mrs. Byng——"

"Call me Norma—please do," she interrupted, "I like the way you pronounce it, and I crave—I—I want some one to be fatherly to me—do you know, I have lost both my parents in the last three years? I—I am quite alone."

"Well, then, Norma, food both quiets and stimulates. First, let us eat, and while we do, forget yourself, and all of your troubles. Afterward you can tell me your story—I am anxious to hear it. While we dine please relate some of the pleasant, delightful things, those for which you are thankful, that happened since I last saw you." I urged all this solicitously. I could not keep my eyes off the beautiful woman, beautiful indeed, though it was evident she had been through some terrible ordeal—the melting fires which refine, and make perfect.

"I do think your idea is more appropriate," she replied with a faint smile at my evident purpose. "It was like you to suggest it. Howard often told me you did things differently. But isn't it strange I was never asked that before?—and how sensible. Let me see—I will have to think. Perhaps, ungratefully I have never tried to enumerate them, and I might have done so with pleasure to myself." I didn't interrupt, for she was smiling now. "First of all—well, I should be truly thankful that I have good health."

"Fine!" I exclaimed, "that's worth a million, and there's a hundred thousand women who would pay that for health and another million for your wonderful hair!"

"Perhaps so—then I have gainful employment compelling attention to others' problems which has taught me values in useful effort, brought me a few friends, uninfluenced by mere money. I should have perished without them," she added, yet inclined to revert.

"That's splendid, go ahead," I encouraged, trying to fathom the nature of Byng's disaster.

"And—I have not lost faith in human kind, and still believe the world mostly good."

"That's still greater; you will make yourself happy yet. Nothing beats invoicing our blessings occasionally."

"Then you know, a short time after your visit there came a little girl and the year that followed I could not have been happier, but——" and her lips began to quiver and she looked at me imploringly.

"There you go: remember only pleasant things yet," I cautioned.

"That's so—that's so—well, she was christened Norma, but Howard always called her 'Little Jim'; said that was the kind of a name you would like. At the christening you were named her godfather."

"He honored me——" And recovering from the surprise I continued, "Reproducing our kind is of the greatest use, and naturally yields the greatest pleasure. Of course, you were happy? Does that end your list of benefactions?"

She struggled hard for composure. She was still delightfully unconscious of her physical charms.

"That's all I can think of now, unless, perhaps, that I still love my husband so much that the lure of men, to a lone, and, in a sense, deposed woman, is transparent and childishly laughable. This has enabled me to keep my womanhood as it should be," she added quietly, a soft glow spreading over her face. I was mystified.

"You have some big items on the credit side of the ledger; now for red ink—but, remember, no tears. You are brave and I don't like to see a brave woman cry. Tell me about everything as though it happened to another, and you a mere witness. Something has happened that was a part of your destiny. You will come to look at it that way later."

"Mr. Wood, you are encouraging and helpful. I will try to be brave but you will not think badly of me if I fail—will you?" she pleaded across the table, full, honest, fearless, glorious, but after all, a woman. No one could have resisted her appeal.

"I have thought of my situation so much I hardly know where to begin to make the fearful enormity of it intelligible to you. It involves business of which I know so little I have never tried to tell it before. No one would understand. I have no confidants. But I knew I would find you some time and somehow I thought it would be such a relief to tell you. I know you will understand!"

"Begin at the middle, anywhere—I'll understand. Take your time; but recollect, this happened to someone else." I insisted, to keep her confident and resolute.

"It appears," she began slowly, "you advised Howard against the bond issue to build the railroad. He took a strong stand against it at first, but father and Mr. Potter finally wore him down and won him over. It was done. This compelled his being in Georgia for almost a year." I nodded.

"A Mr. Ramund was introduced by the bank to take the bonds and he finally came into our homes, welcomed especially by my sister, Mrs. Potter, who was attracted by the glitter of his high position in the financial world. He spoke several languages and was what many would call handsome and polished. To me he was a male person whose sincerity I doubted, but my sister bowed low and endeavored constantly to throw him in my way. I tolerated him, but soon began to look upon him as a possible source of serious trouble."

"The railroad was built, I take it?" I queried.

"The railroad was built and cost more than expected. Howard was barely at home again when there were ominous signs in the business world that upset him. He was not the same man. Then came fearful and dreadful times. I shudder when I recall them. With the change of administration came the crashing panic. Once, during the negotiations with the bank, he told me you had warned him against large borrowing. You were right. Heavy loans from the bank were called seemingly as though part of a plan to get the property. I believe it was. Through it all Howard was kind and affectionate, except when wild, savage moods came on. He would sometimes look the way he did that morning when he carried me away from that terrible island in Georgia. In an incredibly short time the bonds were foreclosed and the bank took the plant and all—everything Howard owned. We were absolutely penniless and had to sacrifice our beautiful home for ready funds. I went to mother. Father lost everything also. It killed him, and mother soon followed."

I was shocked at this news but silently awaited her effort to compose herself.

"Howard went to Georgia. At least, he said he was going there," she continued with an effort. "Then the serpent in this Ramund was unmasked. He became boldly insistent."

Norma hesitated. I could see that the real crux of her story was at hand. "Yes?" said I, gently.

"Urged by my sister, I went to his hotel on the representation that he could and would do something to enable Howard to regain control and finally save his property—the result of his life's labors. You can understand how I wanted to help Howard. Mr. Ramund said the hotel parlor was too public, and asked me to his suite. Obsessed by such intense desire to save my husband, and having so little worldly knowledge, I indiscreetly went. After a little talk on the business matter, this man began to offer protestations of love for me, and told me, brazenly, how much more he could do for me than a bankrupt, discredited husband. Insulted, shocked, and stunned into sheer numbness, which he mistook for silent consent, he grasped me bodily, embraced me and kissed me violently before I could recover. Then the door opened and Howard entered—quiet, fierce, determined. It seems in retrospect a part of a play. With wonderfully polite self-control he, as though requesting an ordinary favor, asked me to please run on home.

"What happened after I left I never knew. Fearful of a great tragedy, and with a sense of injury and mortification, I walked all the way. I was actually afraid to go home. When I finally plucked up sufficient courage to do so, I found he had been there and taken little Jim. I have not heard of them since." It was some moments before she could quiet down, after her painful recital.

"The bank is running the plant now?" I asked, turning away from the subject she had voluntarily introduced. I was through with it. I could see the villainy and perfidy behind Ramund's action. I knew what I would have done were I in Howard Byng's place and I afterward learned that he did that very thing.

"Yes—but there is something wrong," she replied. "It does not prosper. My father's entire fortune went along with the crash. Mr. Potter returned to a bank clerkship where he was when he married sister. She blames me, attributing the disaster to my attitude toward Mr. Ramund, raved about my senseless scruples, and still resists all my attempts at reconciliation. She apparently loves only money. So, you see, I am quite alone. Do you—do you think of any possible way to find my husband and child?" she asked in whispered agony. "You know he took little Jim, then only a year old, because—because—he thought me unfit. I am terribly depressed at times for fear they may be dead. I would have found them if living. He may have done something terrible and had to go. I have tried every way within my meager means to find them. Do you think you can help me?" she implored, reaching out her hands toward me.

"I might, but I sail for Europe to-morrow. I am compelled to go." My words sounded brutal to my own ears after such an appeal.

"Isn't there—isn't there something you can suggest?"

I meditated for some minutes. Howard Byng, if not desperate enough to destroy himself and child, would go back to the pine woods of his birth, I reasoned. Finally I said, "I will give you a letter to a friend of mine in the Excise Department, who travels the turpentine country constantly. He might get trace of him. Howard would return there if living."

"That's so. I never thought of that before. As lowly as was his start in life, he never ceased loving the woods," she recalled, brightening. "How long will you be away?"

Knowing the disappointment the truth would bring to her, I answered ambiguously. "I hardly know. One never can tell, but I hope not very long. Meanwhile keep up a stout heart. Everything straightens out in time. Keep busy, don't brood, be brave." I will never forget how forlorn she looked as she bade me good-bye. If she had known I would be away for several years she would have broken down completely. She felt that I could help her.

I gave her a letter to Charlie Haines, and that was the last I saw of Norma Byng for eight or nine years. Charlie told me that he spent three or four years beating every pine bush in the South without results, and, moreover, that he had somehow lost track of Mrs. Byng. He decided she had married again, as she was too attractive to stay single. Eight or nine years work wonderful changes in any life. It appeared to me that Charlie might be right.