g us off to Paris like
this in the middle of the night," said Germaine pettishly.

"Do you?" said the millionaire. "Well, then, you'll be interested to
hear that I've just seen a burglar here in this very room. I frightened
him, and he bolted through the window on to the terrace."

"He was greenish-pink, slightly tinged with yellow," said the Duke
softly.

"Greenish-pink? Oh, do stop your jesting, Jacques! Is this a time for
idiocy?" cried Germaine, in a tone of acute exasperation.

"It was the dim light which made your father see him in those colours.
In a bright light, I think he would have been an Alsatian blue," said
the Duke suavely.

"You'll have to break yourself of this silly habit of trifling, my dear
Duke, if ever you expect to be a member of the Academie Francaise,"
said the millionaire with some acrimony. "I tell you I did see a
burglar."

"Yes, yes. I admitted it frankly. It was his colour I was talking
about," said the Duke, with an ironical smile.

"Oh, stop your idiotic jokes! We're all sick to death of them!" said
Germaine, with something of the fine fury which so often distinguished
her father.

"There are times for all things," said the millionaire solemnly. "And I
must say that, with the fate of my collection and of the coronet
trembling in the balance, this does not seem to me a season for idle
jests."

"I stand reproved," said the Duke; and he smiled at Sonia.

"My keys, Sonia--the keys of the Paris house," said the millionaire.

Sonia took her own keys from her pocket and went to the bureau. She
slipped a key into the lock and tried to turn it. It would not turn;
and she bent down to look at it.

"Why--why, some one's been tampering with the lock! It's broken!" she
cried.

"I told you I'd seen a burglar!" cried the millionaire triumphantly.
"He was after the keys."

Sonia drew back the flap of the bureau and hastily pulled open the
drawer in which the keys had been.

"They're here!" she cried, taking them out of the drawer and holding
them up.

"Then I was just in time," said the millionaire. "I startled him in the
very act of stealing the keys."

"I withdraw! I withdraw!" said the Duke. "You did see a burglar,
evidently. But still I believe he was greenish-pink. They often are.
However, you'd better give me those keys, Mademoiselle Sonia, since I'm
to get to Paris first. I should look rather silly if, when I got there,
I had to break into the house to catch the burglars."