osebank Villa until he has reported and been sent away on his
continental tour of the great jewel dealers!"

With flying fingers the lady soon penned a letter addressed to "Monsieur
Alois Vautier, Marchand-en-petit, Hotel Bellevue, St. Aubin, Jersey."
"He can telegraph to me at Richmond, and one of us will soon be on
the ground to aid him! Now, 'the longest way round is the nearest
way home!'" laughed the ci-devant Madame Louison, as she departed for
Boulogne, an hour later, having carefully mailed her letter personally,
and sent a brief telegram to the active Jules Victor.

The ex-Zouave had easily made the rounds of the pretty islet of Jersey,
in his capacity of merchant of small wares, long before Alixe Delavigne,
braving the stormy channel, had proceeded from Folkestone directly to
Richmond, and hidden herself in the leafy bowers of Rosebank Villa.
Smiling, gay and debonnair with all the women servants, he had a pinch
of snuff, a cigar of fair quality, or a pipe full of tabac for coachman
and groom, supplemented with many a petit verre from his capacious
flask. His Gallic gallantry, with the gift of a trinket or ribbon, made
him welcome with simple milk-maid or pert house "slavey," and the dapper
little Frenchman was already an established favorite in the wine-room of
the Hotel Bellevue.

His greatest triumph, however, was the secret demonstration of the
cheapness of Jersey prices to the London sewing woman and smart lady's
maid, now chafing under Janet Fairbarn's iron rule at the "Banker's
Folly." "Norn d'un pipe! But I have to make shameful rabaissements de
prix," muttered Jules, as he adroitly worked upon the susceptibilities
of the two new maid servants. While one or the other of these women
always accompanied Miss Nadine Johnstone in her daily wanderings through
the splendid gardens of the Folly, the merry voice of Jules Victor was
often heard by them singing on his way down the road. The gift of a
famous brule guenle had propitiated the simple Jersey gardener, whose
stout boy rejoiced in a new leather jacket, almost a gift, and the
second man, Andrew Fraser's reinforcement, a famous drinker, was soon
a nightly companion of "Alois Vautier" at the one little "public," down
under the scarped hill at Rizel Bay.

Andrew Fraser, closeted with the London lawyer, had almost forgotten the
existence of Nadine Johnstone.

A formal interview as to the filing of her father's will, a mere mute
exhibition of perfunctory