see
the baroness. On being informed that she was not well enough to receive
visitors, he sent up a message that his business was of great importance
and that he would wait downstairs for a second answer.

On receiving this message, Rosamond turned, as usual, to her elder
sister for advice. Ida went downstairs immediately to see the stranger.
What I am now about to tell you of the extraordinary interview which
took place between them, and of the shocking events that followed it, I
have heard from Miss Welwyn's own lips.

She felt unaccountably nervous when she entered the room. The stranger
bowed very politely, and asked, in a foreign accent, if she were the
Baroness Franval. She set him right on this point, and told him she
attended to all matters of business for the baroness; adding that, if
his errand at all concerned her sister's husband, the baron was not then
at home.

The stranger answered that he was aware of it when he called, and that
the unpleasant business on which he came could not be confided to the
baron--at least, in the first instance.

She asked why. He said he was there to explain; and expressed himself as
feeling greatly relieved at having to open his business to her, because
she would, doubtless, be best able to prepare her sister for the bad
news that he was, unfortunately, obliged to bring. The sudden faintness
which overcame her, as he spoke those words, prevented her from
addressing him in return. He poured out some water for her from a bottle
which happened to be standing on the table, and asked if he might depend
on her fortitude. She tried to say "Yes"; but the violent throbbing
of her heart seemed to choke her. He took a foreign newspaper from his
pocket, saying that he was a secret agent of the French police--that the
paper was the Havre _Journal_, for the past week, and that it had been
expressly kept from reaching the baron, as usual, through his (the
agent's) interference. He then opened the newspaper, and begged that she
would nerve herself sufficiently (for her sister's sake) to read certain
lines, which would give her some hint of the business that brought him
there. He pointed to the passage as he spoke. It was among the "Shipping
Entries," and was thus expressed:

"Arrived, the _Berenice_, from San Francisco, with a valuable cargo of
hides. She brings one passenger, the Baron Franval, of Chateau Franval,
in Normandy."

As Miss Welwyn read the entry, her heart, which had been t