wished to wear it at night against the hard back of the carriage, and guard the other all glossy for the wedding." Madame Dépine quavered pleadingly, but she could not quite believe herself.

"The wedding had no more existence than the Princess," returned Madame la Propriétaire, believing herself more and more.

"Then she will have cheated me out of the grey wig from the first," cried Madame Dépine, involuntarily. "And I who sacrificed myself to her!"

"Comment! It was your wig?"

"No, no." She flushed and stammered. "But enfin—and then, oh, heaven! my brooch!"

"She has stolen your brooch?"

Great tears rolled down the wrinkled, ashen cheeks. So this was her reward for secretly instructing the coiffeur to make the "Princess's" wig first. The Princess, indeed! Ah, the adventuress! She felt choking; she shook her fist in the air. Not even the brooch to show when her family came up from Tonnerre, to say nothing of the wig. Was there a God in the world at all? Oh, holy Mother! No wonder the trickstress would not be escorted to the station—she never went to the station. No wonder she would not sell the royal secrets to the journalist—there were none to sell. Oh! it was all of a piece.

"If I were you I should go to the bureau of police!" said Madame la Propriétaire.

Yes, she would go; the wretch should be captured, should be haled to gaol. Even her half of the Louis Quinze timepiece recurred to poor Madame Dépine's brain.

"Add that she has stolen my carpet-bag."

The local bureau telegraphed first to Tonnerre.

There had been the wedding, but no Madame Valière. She had accepted the invitation, had given notice of her arrival; one had awaited the midnight train. The family was still wondering why the rich aunt had turned sulky at the last hour. But she was always an eccentric; a capricious and haughty personage.

Poor Madame Dépine's recurrent "My wig! my brooch!" reduced the official mind to the same muddle as her own.

"No doubt a sudden impulse of senescent kleptomania," said the superintendent, sagely, when he had noted down for transference to headquarters Madame Dépine's verbose and vociferous description of the traits and garments of the runagate. "But we will do our best to recover your brooch and your wig." Then, with a spasm of supreme sagacity, "Without doubt they are in the carpet-bag."