" urged the king, his slender, white hand
trembling with agitation.

A frosty current ran through my veins as I compared the pictured cross
with that in my companion's hand. It was the same--not a doubt of
it--and the eyes, too, were the same, as also the dress and the whole
figure were unmistakably those of the gray nun I had danced with. Yet
in those conspicuously large, deep black eyes lay not an expression of
peacefulness and mild resignation, but a world of passionate feeling.
Having assured the king of the identity of the cross, and he having
informed me that it was an ancient heirloom of which no duplicate
existed, he bade me accompany him further.

Arrived in the antechamber to his apartments, the king gave an order to
one of the attendants on duty there. He walked up and down the room for
a few moments in visible excitement, and then, stopping before me, and
looking at me searchingly, he asked:

"Have you ever, in the course of your life, met with a manifestation of
the supernatural?"

I was so bewildered and nervous that I scarcely could remember enough
French to reply:

"May it please your Majesty, I have not."

"Do you believe in the possibility of the dead returning?"

"Not in the sense of their coming as apparitions. I always was, still
am, a skeptic on the point of ghost stories in general, nevertheless I
am a Christian, and I believe and know that we continue to live after
death."

The king stared at me mechanically:

"You are a Protestant, and you say you are a skeptic. Curious--only you
saw the apparition--it was revealed to no one else?"

"Then your Majesty is of the opinion that this is actually a case of a
spectral apparition?"

"Certainly. It seems much more plausible than open theft. This very
cross I myself--"

He interrupted his sentence as he turned to the door, through which,
with profound obeisances, entered two ladies in waiting--probably the
queen's. His Majesty addressed one of them in French, no doubt to enable
me to participate in the conversation:

"You were present, Madame M., when Princess A. was laid in her coffin
seventeen years ago?"

A low curtsey was the affirmative reply.

"And you also, Madame U.?"

"I had the honor, your Majesty, of rendering her royal highness the last
earthly services."

"You remember perfectly what dress the deceased was buried in?"

"Quite well, your Majesty. It was the regular dress of the Order of Gray
Sisters, of which her royal