other, a certain sense of weariness crept in upon him toward its close.

Two days later he received another letter. This time it was couched in
different terms. On a square card, at the top of which was stamped a
small coronet, he read as follows:

Madame de Maupassim at home, Saturday evening, May 2nd, at ten o'clock.

In small letters at the bottom left-hand corner were added the words:

To meet friends.

Peter Ruff put the card upon the fire and went out for a morning's
rabbit shooting with his keeper. When he returned luncheon was ready,
but Violet was absent. He rang the bell.

"Where is your mistress, Jane?" he asked the parlor-maid.

The girl had no idea. Mrs. Ruff had left for the village several hours
before; since then she had not been seen. Peter Ruff ate his luncheon
alone, and understood. The afternoon wore on, and at night he traveled
up to London. He knew better than to waste time by purposeless
inquiries. Instead he took the nine o'clock train the next morning to
Paris.

It was a chamber of death into which he was ushered, dismal--yet, of its
sort, unique, marvelous. The room itself might have been the sleeping
apartment of an empress--lofty, with white paneled walls, adorned simply
with gilded lines; with high windows, closely curtained now, so that
neither sound nor the light of day might penetrate into the room. In the
middle of the apartment upon a canopy bedside, which had once adorned
a king's palace, lay Madame de Maupassim. Her face was already touched
with the finger of death, yet her eyes were undimmed and her lips
unquivering. Her hands, covered with rings, lay out before her upon
the lace coverlid. Supported by many pillows, she was issuing her last
instructions with the cold precision of the man of affairs who makes the
necessary arrangements for a few days, absence from his business.

Peter Ruff, who had not even been allowed sufficient time to change his
traveling clothes, was brought without hesitation to her bedside. She
looked at him in silence for a moment, with a cold glitter in her eyes.

"You are four days late, Monsieur Peter Ruff," she remarked. "Why did
you not obey your first summons?

"Madame," he answered, "I thought there must be a misunderstanding. Four
years ago, I gave notice to the council that I had married and retired
into private life. A country farmer is of no further use to the world."

The woman's thin lip curled.

"From death and the Double Four," sh