the
approaching marriage of his daughter Angelique, Princesse de
Bourbon-Conde, with Monsieur Arsene Lupin, and to request...."

Jean Duc de Sarzeau-Vendome could not finish reading the invitations
which he held in his trembling hand. Pale with anger, his long, lean
body shaking with tremors:

"There!" he gasped, handing the two communications to his daughter.
"This is what our friends have received! This has been the talk of Paris
since yesterday! What do you say to that dastardly insult, Angelique?
What would your poor mother say to it, if she were alive?"

Angelique was tall and thin like her father, skinny and angular like
him. She was thirty-three years of age, always dressed in black stuff,
shy and retiring in manner, with a head too small in proportion to her
height and narrowed on either side until the nose seemed to jut forth in
protest against such parsimony. And yet it would be impossible to say
that she was ugly, for her eyes were extremely beautiful, soft and
grave, proud and a little sad: pathetic eyes which to see once was to
remember.

She flushed with shame at hearing her father's words, which told her the
scandal of which she was the victim. But, as she loved him,
notwithstanding his harshness to her, his injustice and despotism, she
said:

"Oh, I think it must be meant for a joke, father, to which we need pay
no attention!"

"A joke? Why, every one is gossiping about it! A dozen papers have
printed the confounded notice this morning, with satirical comments.
They quote our pedigree, our ancestors, our illustrious dead. They
pretend to take the thing seriously...."

"Still, no one could believe...."

"Of course not. But that doesn't prevent us from being the by-word of
Paris."

"It will all be forgotten by to-morrow."

"To-morrow, my girl, people will remember that the name of Angelique de
Sarzeau-Vendome has been bandied about as it should not be. Oh, if I
could find out the name of the scoundrel who has dared...."

At that moment, Hyacinthe, the duke's valet, came in and said that
monsieur le duc was wanted on the telephone. Still fuming, he took down
the receiver and growled:

"Well? Who is it? Yes, it's the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendome speaking."

A voice replied:

"I want to apologize to you, monsieur le duc, and to Mlle. Angelique.
It's my secretary's fault."

"Your secretary?"

"Yes, the invitations were only a rough draft which I meant to submit to
you. Unfortunately