ogant. "Your cleverest policemen," she told the
magistrate, "will never find any evidence against me. Think well before
you send me to prison. I am not the woman to live long among thieves and
prostitutes." Before deciding finally whether the widow should be thrown
into such uncongenial society, the magistrate ordered Mace to search her
apartment in the Rue de Boulogne.

On entering the apartment the widow asked that all the windows should be
opened. "Let in the air," she said; "the police are coming in; they
make a nasty smell." She was invited to sit down while the officers
made their search. Her letters and papers were carefully examined;
they presented a strange mixture of order and disorder. Carefully kept
account books of her personal expenses were mixed up with billets
dous, paints and pomades, moneylenders' circulars, belladonna and
cantharides. But most astounding of all were the contents of the widows'
prie-Dieu. In this devotional article of furniture were stored all the
inmost secrets of her profligate career. Affectionate letters from the
elderly gentleman on whom she had imposed a supposititious child lay
side by side with a black-edged card, on which was written the last
message of a young lover who had killed himself on her account. "Jeanne,
in the flush of my youth I die because of you, but I forgive you.--M."
With these genuine outpourings of misplaced affection were mingled the
indecent verses of a more vulgar admirer, and little jars of hashish.
The widow, unmoved by this rude exposure of her way of life, only broke
her silence to ask Mace the current prices on the Stock Exchange.

One discovery, however, disturbed her equanimity. In the drawer of a
cupboard, hidden under some linen, Mace found a leather case containing
a sheaf of partially-burnt letters. As he was about to open it the widow
protested that it was the property of M. de Saint Pierre. Regardless of
her protest, Mace opened the case, and, looking through the letters, saw
that they were addressed to M. de Saint Pierre and were plainly of an
intimate character. "I found them on the floor near the stove in the
dining-room," said the widow, "and I kept them. I admit it was a wrong
thing to do, but Georges will forgive me when he knows why I did it."
From his better acquaintance with her character Mace surmised that
an action admitted by the widow to be "wrong" was in all probability
something worse. Without delay he took the prisoner back to