d
which he found to contain a number of faded documents, damaged at the
folds and torn in different places.

He examined them amid perfect silence, read them through, studied them
thoroughly, inspected the signatures and the seals through a magnifying
glass, and said:

"They bear every sign of being genuine. The seals are official."

"Then, Monsieur le Prefet--?" said Florence, in a trembling voice.

"Then, Mademoiselle, let me tell you that your ignorance strikes me as
most incredible."

And, turning to the solicitor, he said:

"Listen briefly to what these documents contain and prove. Gaston
Sauverand, Cosmo Mornington's heir in the fourth line, had, as you know,
an elder brother, called Raoul, who lived in the Argentine Republic. This
brother, before his death, sent to Europe, in the charge of an old nurse,
a child of five who was none other than his daughter, a natural but
legally recognized daughter whom he had had by Mlle. Levasseur, a French
teacher at Buenos Ayres.

"Here is the birth certificate. Here is the signed declaration written
entirely in the father's hand. Here is the affidavit signed by the old
nurse. Here are the depositions of three friends, merchants or
solicitors at Buenos Ayres. And here are the death certificates of the
father and mother.

"All these documents have been legalized and bear the seals of the French
consulate. For the present, I have no reason to doubt them; and I am
bound to look upon Florence Levasseur as Raoul Sauverand's daughter and
Gaston Sauverand's niece."

"Gaston Sauvarand's niece? ... His niece?" stammered Florence.

The mention of a father whom she had, so to speak, never known, left her
unmoved. But she began to weep at the recollection of Gaston Sauverand,
whom she loved so fondly and to whom she found herself linked by such a
close relationship.

Were her tears sincere? Or were they the tears of an actress able to play
her part down to the slightest details? Were those facts really revealed
to her for the first time? Or was she acting the emotions which the
revelation of those facts would produce in her under natural conditions?

Don Luis observed M. Desmalions even more narrowly than he did the girl,
and tried to read the secret thoughts of the man with whom the decision
lay. And suddenly he became certain that Florence's arrest was a matter
resolved upon as definitely as the arrest of the most monstrous criminal.
Then he went up to her and said:

"F