iscovery.
Instead, it sank weakly down into the nearest chair.

"Oh!" it moaned. "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

"Who--who are you?" huskily demanded Mrs. De Peyster.

"Oh! Oh!" moaned the figure. "Isn't it terrible! Isn't it terrible!
But I didn't mean to do it--I didn't mean to do it, Caroline!"

"It's not--not Olivetta?" gasped Mrs. De Peyster.

"It was an accident!" the figure wailed on. "I couldn't help myself.
And if you knew what I've gone through to get here, I know you'd
forgive me."

Mrs. De Peyster had lifted the veil up over the hat.

"Olivetta! Then--after all--you're not dead!"

"No--if I only were!" sobbed Olivetta.

"Then who is that--that person who's coming here this morning?"

"I don't know!" Then Olivetta's quavering voice grew hard with
indignation. "It's somebody who's trying to get a good funeral under
false pretenses!"

"But the papers said the body had on my clothes."

"Yes--I suppose it must have had."

"But how--" Mrs. De Peyster recalled their precarious position.
"Matilda, lock the door. But, Olivetta, how could it ever, ever have
happened?"

"I followed your directions--and got to Paris all right--and
everything was going splendid--and I was beginning to enjoy
myself--when--when--Oh, Caroline, I--I--"

"You what?" demanded Mrs. De Peyster.

"I lost my purse!" sobbed Olivetta.

"Lost your purse?"

"I left it in a cab when I went to the Louvre. And in it was all my
money--my letter of credit--everything!"

"Olivetta!"

"And I didn't dare cable you for more. For if I had sent a cable to
you here, it might have betrayed you."

"And what did you do?"

"There was nothing for me to do but to--to--sell some of your gowns."

"Oh!" Mrs. De Peyster was beginning dimly to see the drift of things.

Olivetta's mind wandered to another phase of her tribulations.

"And the price I got for them was a swindle, Caroline. It was--it was
a tragedy! For your black chiffon, and your silver satin, and your
spangled net--"

"But this person they took for me?" interrupted Mrs. De Peyster.

"Oh, whoever she is, she must have bought one of them. She could have
bought it for nothing--and that Frenchman who cheated me--would have
doubled his money. And after she bought it--she--she"--Olivetta's
voice rang out with hysterical resentment--"she got us all into this
trouble by walking into the Seine. It's the most popular pastime
in Paris, to walk into the Seine. But why," ended Olivetta with a
spiteful