"The next day came and went, but no L'Hommedieu appeared; another, and I
began to grow seriously uneasy; a third, and a dreadful thing happened.
Late in the afternoon Mrs. L'Hommedieu, dressed very oddly, came sliding
in at the front door, and with an appealing smile at the hallboy, who
wished but dared not ask her for the key which made these visits
possible, glided by to her old rooms, and, finding the door unlocked,
went softly in. Her appearance is worth description, for it shows the
pitiful efforts she made at disguise, in the hope, I suppose, of
escaping the surveillance she was evidently conscious of being under.
She was in the habit of wearing on cool days a black circular with a
grey lining. This she had turned inside out so that the gray was
uppermost; while over her neat black bonnet she had flung a long veil,
also grey, which not only hid her face, but gave her appearance an
eccentric look as different as possible from her usual aspect. The
hallboy, who had never seen her save in showy black or bright colours,
said she looked like a ghost in the daytime, but it was all done for a
purpose, I am sure, and to escape the attention of the man who had
followed her before. Alas, he might have followed her this time without
addition to her suffering! Scarcely had she entered the room where her
treasure had been left than she saw the torn paper and gaping baseboard,
and, uttering a cry so piercing it found its way even to the stolid
heart of the hallboy, she tottered back into the hall, where she fell
into the arms of her husband, who had followed her in from the street in
a state of frenzy almost equal to her own.

"The janitor, who that minute appeared on the stairway, says that he
never saw two such faces. They looked at each other and were speechless.
He was the first to hang his head.

"'It is gone, Henry,' she whispered, 'It is gone. You have taken it.'

"He did not answer.

"'And it is lost! You have risked it, and it is lost!'

"He uttered a groan. 'You should have given it to me that night. There
was luck in the air then. Now the devil is in the cards and----'

"Her arms went up with a shriek. 'My curse be upon you, Henry
L'Hommedieu!' And whether it was the look with which she uttered this
imprecation, or whether there was some latent love left in his heart for
this long-suffering and once beautiful woman, he shrank at her words,
and, stumbling like a man in the darkness, uttered a heart-rending
groan