ht be sent to the country as
soon as possible."

So far the story seems clear and plausible, assuming that a lady, in
such a delicate state of health, could bear the fatigues of so long and
trying a journey as that from Rheims to Paris. But from this stage the
mystery, which it took so many wise heads to penetrate in future years,
begins to thicken. Although the children were said to have been born on
the 10th of July it was not until eleven days later that Mrs Hewit
imparted the news to the two maids who had been left behind at Rheims,
in the letter from which I have quoted. Further, although the Colonel
wrote to six different people on the 10th not one of his letters
contains any reference to such an interesting event, which should, one
would think, have excluded all other topics from a father's pen.

Moreover, although the Colonel and his wife were, as the house-books
proved, staying on the 10th of July at the hotel of a M. Godefroi,
neither the landlord nor his wife had any knowledge that a birth had
taken place, or was even expected; and it was beyond question that the
lady left the house on the 13th, three days after the alleged event,
without exciting any suspicion as to what had so mysteriously taken
place.

On the 13th, the Colonel and his lady, accompanied by Mrs Hewit,
declared that they went for a few days to the house of a Madame la
Brune, a nurse--but no child, M. and Mme. Godefroi swore, accompanied
them; and on the 18th of July, eight days after the accouchement, they
made their appearance at Michele's Hotel (still without a solitary
infant to show), where Madame was already so far recovered that she
spent the days in jaunting about Paris and making trips to Versailles.

At Michele's the story they told was that the infants were so delicate
that they had been sent into the country to nurse; and yet none had seen
them go. But before the parents had been a day in their new quarters the
Colonel, after hours of absence, appeared with a child--a puny infant,
but still unmistakably genuine. Thus one of the twins was accounted for.
The other, they declared, was still more delicate and must be left in
the country.

It was quite certain that the children had not been born either at
Godefroi's or Michele's Hotel. As for the intermediate place of lodging,
the most diligent later enquiries failed to discover either Madame la
Brune or the house in which she was supposed to live in the Faubourg St
Germain. Moreo