n
bound for Boston who occupied the seat next mine in the Pullman car was
sleeping soundly, I exchanged my well-worn covert coat for his richly
made, sable-lined surtout, and made off as well with his suit-case on
the chance of its holding something that might later serve some one of
my many purposes. I mention this in passing only because the suit-case,
containing as it did all the essential features of a gentleman's evening
attire, even to three superb pearl studs in the bosom of an immaculately
white shirt, all of them, marvellously enough, as perfectly fitting as
though they had been made for me, with a hundred unregistered
first-mortgage bonds of the United States Steel Company--of which
securities there will be more anon--enabled me later to appear before
Mrs. Van Raffles in a guise so prosperous as to win an immediate renewal
of her favor.

"We shall be almost as great a combination as the original Bunny," she
cried, enthusiastically, when I told her of this coup. "With my brains
and your blind luck nothing can stop us."

My own feelings as I drove up to Bolivar Lodge were mixed. I still loved
Henriette madly, but the contrast between her present luxury and my
recent misery grated harshly upon me. I could not rid myself of the
notion that Raffles had told her of the secret hiding-place of the
diamond stomacher of the duchess of Herringdale, and that she had
appropriated to her own use all the proceeds of its sale, leaving me,
who had risked my liberty to obtain it, without a penny's worth of
dividend for my pains. It did not seem quite a level thing to do, and I
must confess that I greeted the lady in a reproachful spirit. It was,
indeed, she, and more radiantly beautiful than ever--a trifle thinner
perhaps, and her eyes more coldly piercing than seductively winning as
of yore, but still Henriette whom I had once so madly loved and who had
jilted me for a better man.

"Dear old Bunny!" she murmured, holding out both hands in welcome. "Just
to think that after all these years and in a strange land and under
such circumstances we should meet again!"

"It is strange," said I, my eye roving about the drawing-room, which
from the point of view of its appointments and decoration was about the
richest thing I had ever seen either by light of day or in the
mysterious glimpses one gets with a dark lantern of the houses of the
moneyed classes. "It seems more than strange," I added, significantly,
"to see you surrounde