on the
distinguished appearance of the unhappy foreigner; she ventured the
suggestion, promptly and sternly checked by her mamma, that she herself
might be the lost child; she grew plaintive, and expressed a burning
desire to comfort this stricken parent with a daughter's love, and,
worst of all, she sat silent, with a far-away look in her charming
eyes, and obviously suffered her thoughts to go astray after this
handsome Marquis in a fashion that made even the Count Siccatif de
Courtray fidget, and that filled the soul of Jaune d'Antimoine with a
consuming jealousy--not the less consuming because of the absurd fact
that it was jealousy of himself! As he walked home that night through
the devious ways of Greenwich to his dismal studio, he seriously
entertained the wish that he never had been born.

The next day all the morning papers contained elaborate "interviews"
with the Marquis: for each of the several reporters who had been put on
the case, believing that he alone had failed to get the facts, and
being upheld by a lofty determination that no other reporter should
"get a beat on him," had evolved from his own inner consciousness the
story that Jaune, for the best of reasons, had refused to tell. The
stories thus told, being based upon the original fiction, bore a family
resemblance to each other; and as all of them were interesting, they
stimulated popular curiosity in regard to their hero to a very high
pitch. As the result of them, Jaune found himself the most conspicuous
man in New York. During the three hours of his walk he was the centre
of an interested crowd. Several benevolent persons stopped to tell him
of fatherless young women with whom they were acquainted, and to urge
upon him the probability that each of these young women was his
long-lost child. The representatives of a dozen detective bureaus
introduced themselves to him, and made offer of their professional
services; a messenger from the chief of police handed him a polite note
tendering the services of the department and inviting him to a
conference. It was maddening.

But worst of all were his meetings with Rose. As these multiplied, the
conviction became irresistible that they were not the result of chance;
indeed, her manner made doubt upon this head impossible. At first she
gave him only a passing glance, then a glance somewhat longer, then a
look of kindly interest, then a long look of sympathy; and at last she
bestowed upon him a gentle, a