"YOU mightn't mind being
seen--but I would-- Good-by."
She held out a hand to each of the men, who remained for an instant
silently holding them. Then she passed out of the door, slipping
on her close black veil as she did so with a half-funereal
suggestion, and they saw her tall, handsome figure fade into the
shadows of the long corridor.
"Paul," said the Mayor, reentering the office and turning to his
secretary, "do you know who that woman is?"
"Yes, sir."
"She's one in a million! And now forget that you have ever seen
her."
CHAPTER I.
The principal parlor of the New Golden Gate Hotel in San Francisco,
fairly reported by the local press as being "truly palatial" in its
appointments, and unrivaled in its upholstery, was, nevertheless,
on August 5, 1860, of that startling newness that checked any
familiarity, and evidently had produced some embarrassment on the
limbs of four visitors who had just been ushered into its glories.
After hesitating before one or two gorgeous fawn-colored brocaded
easy-chairs of appalling and spotless virginity, one of them seated
himself despairingly on a tete-a-tete sofa in marked and painful
isolation, while another sat uncomfortably upright on a sofa.
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