"And this, my dear, will mean another three months with my sweet old palsied Duc de la Houspignolle," she had laughingly yet bitterly exclaimed, in excellent English, to the impassive young Oxford man who was then dogging her heels.

She was a wit, and she had a beautiful hand, even though she was no better than the rest of Monte Carlo, ruminated the safe-breaker easily, as he squinted, under the flare of a match, at the ward indentations in his wax-covered key-flange.
His thoughts went back, as he worked, to the timely yet unexpected scene at the stair-head, two hours before.

There he had helped a slim young _femme de chambre_ support the Princess to her room, that royal lady having done her best to drown her ill fortune in absinthe and American high-balls--which, he knew, was ever an impossible combination.

She had collapsed at the head of the stairs, and as he had helped lift her he had first caught sight of the solitaire diamond on the limp and slender finger.

This reactionary mood, in the face of the earlier more tragical hours of that day of wearing anxieties, was almost one of facetiousness.