She carried a lace scarf which she could drape about her head, and in a moment she would be, in the dim light, an old, old woman, with a voice so altered that no one could know it.

Indeed, you said rightly, monsieur--she was clever." To all who listened Helene Vauquier's story carried its conviction.
Mme.

Dauvray rose vividly before their minds as a living woman.

Celie's trickeries were so glibly described that they could hardly have been invented, and certainly not by this poor peasant-woman whose lips so bravely struggled with Medici, and Montespan, and the names of the other great ladies.

How, indeed, should she know of them at all?
She could never have had the inspiration to concoct the most convincing item of her story--the queer craze of Mme.