, the
more so that this thousand pounds was in a peculiar sense her own money,
as the woman who had left it her was her mother's sister, having nothing
to do either with her father or with the late George Bailey!

And so she had had her way--nay, more; Chester, at the very last, had
gone to great trouble in order that she might not be cheated over her
purchase. Best of all, Bill--Sylvia always called the serious-minded
young lawyer "Bill"--had lived to admit that Mrs. Bailey had made a good
investment after all, for her pearls had increased in value in the two
years she had had them.

Be that as it may, the young widow often reminded herself that nothing
she had ever bought, and nothing that had ever been given her, had caused
her such lasting pleasure as her beloved string of pearls!

But on this pleasant June afternoon, in deference to her determined
friend's advice, she took off her pearls before starting out for
Montmartre, leaving the case in the charge of M. Girard, the genial
proprietor of the Hotel de l'Horloge.

CHAPTER II

With easy, leisurely steps, constantly stopping to look into the windows
of the quaint shops they passed on the way, Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky
walked up the steep, the almost mountainous byways and narrow streets
which lead to the top of Montmartre.

The whole population seemed to have poured itself out in the open air on
this sunny day; even the shopkeepers had brought chairs out of their
shops and sat on the pavement, gaily laughing and gossiping together in
the eager way Parisians have. As the two foreign ladies, both young, both
in their very different fashion good-looking, walked past the sitting
groups of neighbours--men, women, and children would stop talking and
stare intently at them, as is also a Parisian way.

At first Sylvia had disliked the manner in which she was stared at in
Paris, and she had been much embarrassed as well as a little amused by
the very frank remarks called forth in omnibuses as well as in the street
by the brilliancy of her complexion and the bright beauty of her fair
hair. But now she was almost used to this odd form of homage, which came
quite as often from women as from men.

"The Rue Jolie?" answered a cheerful-looking man in answer to a question.
"Why, it's ever so much further up!" and he vaguely pointed skywards.

And it was much further up, close to the very top of the great hill! In
fact, it took the two ladies a long time to fi