The Essential Maurice Leblanc Collection. Морис Леблан

she cried, taking it.

      She took it from the case, saying that it was a beauty. She showed it to Sonia; then she put it on and stood before a mirror admiring the effect. To tell the truth, the effect was not entirely desirable. The pearls did not improve the look of her rather coarse brown skin; and her skin added nothing to the beauty of the pearls. Sonia saw this, and so did the Duke. He looked at Sonia's white throat. She met his eyes and blushed. She knew that the same thought was in both their minds; the pearls would have looked infinitely better there.

      Germaine finished admiring herself; she was incapable even of suspecting that so expensive a pendant could not suit her perfectly.

      The Duke said idly: "Goodness! Are all those invitations to the wedding?"

      "That's only down to the letter V," said Germaine proudly.

      "And there are twenty-five letters in the alphabet! You must be inviting the whole world. You'll have to have the Madeleine enlarged. It won't hold them all. There isn't a church in Paris that will," said the Duke.

      "Won't it be a splendid marriage!" said Germaine. "There'll be something like a crush. There are sure to be accidents."

      "If I were you, I should have careful arrangements made," said the Duke.

      "Oh, let people look after themselves. They'll remember it better if they're crushed a little," said Germaine.

      There was a flicker of contemptuous wonder in the Duke's eyes. But he only shrugged his shoulders, and turning to Sonia, said, "Will you be an angel and play me a little Grieg, Mademoiselle Kritchnoff? I heard you playing yesterday. No one plays Grieg like you."

      "Excuse me, Jacques, but Mademoiselle Kritchnoff has her work to do," said Germaine tartly.

      "Five minutes' interval--just a morsel of Grieg, I beg," said the Duke, with an irresistible smile.

      "All right," said Germaine grudgingly. "But I've something important to talk to you about."

      "By Jove! So have I. I was forgetting. I've the last photograph I took of you and Mademoiselle Sonia." Germaine frowned and shrugged her shoulders. "With your light frocks in the open air, you look like two big flowers," said the Duke.

      "You call that important!" cried Germaine.

      "It's very important--like all trifles," said the Duke, smiling. "Look! isn't it nice?" And he took a photograph from his pocket, and held it out to her.

      "Nice? It's shocking! We're making the most appalling faces," said Germaine, looking at the photograph in his hand.

      "Well, perhaps you ARE making faces," said the Duke seriously, considering the photograph with grave earnestness. "But they're not appalling faces--not by any means. You shall be judge, Mademoiselle Sonia. The faces--well, we won't talk about the faces--but the outlines. Look at the movement of your scarf." And he handed the photograph to Sonia.

      "Jacques!" said Germaine impatiently.

      "Oh, yes, you've something important to tell me. What is it?" said the Duke, with an air of resignation; and he took the photograph from Sonia and put it carefully back in his pocket.

      "Victoire has telephoned from Paris to say that we've had a paper-knife and a Louis Seize inkstand given us," said Germaine.

      "Hurrah!" cried the Duke in a sudden shout that made them both jump.

      "And a pearl necklace," said Germaine.

      "Hurrah!" cried the Duke.

      "You're perfectly childish," said Germaine pettishly. "I tell you we've been given a paper-knife, and you shout 'hurrah!' I say we've been given a pearl necklace, and you shout 'hurrah!' You can't have the slightest sense of values."

      "I beg your pardon. This pearl necklace is from one of your father's friends, isn't it?" said the Duke.

      "Yes; why?" said Germaine.

      "But the inkstand and the paper-knife must be from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and well on the shabby side?" said the Duke.

      "Yes; well?"

      "Well then, my dear girl, what are you complaining about? They balance; the equilibrium is restored. You can't have everything," said the Duke; and he laughed mischievously.

      Germaine flushed, and bit her lip; her eyes sparkled.

      "You don't care a rap about me," she said stormily.

      "But I find you adorable," said the Duke.

      "You keep annoying me," said Germaine pettishly. "And you do it on purpose. I think it's in very bad taste. I shall end by taking a dislike to you--I know I shall."

      "Wait till we're married for that, my dear girl," said the Duke; and he laughed again, with a blithe, boyish cheerfulness, which deepened the angry flush in Germaine's cheeks.

      "Can't you be serious about anything?" she cried.

      "I am the most serious man in Europe," said the Duke.

      Germaine went to the window and stared out of it sulkily.

      The Duke walked up and down the hall, looking at the pictures of some of his ancestors--somewhat grotesque persons--with humorous appreciation. Between addressing the envelopes Sonia kept glancing at him. Once he caught her eye, and smiled at her. Germaine's back was eloquent of her displeasure. The Duke stopped at a gap in the line of pictures in which there hung a strip of old tapestry.

      "I can never understand why you have left all these ancestors of mine staring from the walls and have taken away the quite admirable and interesting portrait of myself," he said carelessly.

      Germaine turned sharply from the window; Sonia stopped in the middle of addressing an envelope; and both the girls stared at him in astonishment.

      "There certainly was a portrait of me where that tapestry hangs. What have you done with it?" said the Duke.

      "You're making fun of us again," said Germaine.

      "Surely your Grace knows what happened," said Sonia.

      "We wrote all the details to you and sent you all the papers three years ago. Didn't you get them?" said Germaine.

      "Not a detail or a newspaper. Three years ago I was in the neighbourhood of the South Pole, and lost at that," said the Duke.

      "But it was most dramatic, my dear Jacques. All Paris was talking of it," said Germaine. "Your portrait was stolen."

      "Stolen? Who stole it?" said the Duke.

      Germaine crossed the hall quickly to the gap in the line of pictures.

      "I'll show you," she said.

      She drew aside the piece of tapestry, and in the middle of the panel over which the portrait of the Duke had hung he saw written in chalk the words:

      ARSENE LUPIN

      "What do you think of that autograph?" said Germaine.

      "'Arsene Lupin?'" said the Duke in a tone of some bewilderment.

      "He left his signature. It seems that he always does so," said Sonia in an explanatory tone.

      "But who is he?" said the Duke.

      "Arsene Lupin? Surely you know who Arsene Lupin is?" said Germaine impatiently.

      "I haven't the slightest notion," said the Duke.

      "Oh, come! No one is as South-Pole as all that!" cried Germaine. "You don't know who Lupin is? The most whimsical, the most audacious, and the most genial thief in France. For the last