a
more than contemptuous snub from one of those penniless aristocrats, who
had rendered her own sojourn in London so unpleasant and unsuccessful.

She had suffered from these snubs before, but had never had the chance
of forcing an esclandre, as a result of her own humiliation. That spirit
of hatred for the rich and idle classes, which was so characteristic of
revolutionary France, was alive and hot within her: she had never had
an opportunity--she, the humble fugitive actress from a minor Paris
theatre--to retort with forcible taunts to the ironical remarks made at
and before her by the various poverty-stricken but haughty emigres who
swarmed in those very same circles of London society into which she
herself had vainly striven to penetrate.

Now at last, one of this same hated class, provoked beyond self-control,
was allowing childish and unreasoning fury to outstrip the usual calm
irony of aristocratic rebuffs.

Juliette had paused awhile, in order to check the wrathful tears which,
much against her will, were choking the words in her throat and blinding
her eyes.

"Hoity! toity!" laughed Candeille, "hark at the young baggage!"

But Juliette had turned to Marguerite and began explaining volubly:

"My mother's jewels!" she said in the midst of her tears, "ask her
how she came by them. When I was obliged to leave the home of my
fathers,--stolen from me by the Revolutionary Government--I contrived to
retain my mother's jewels... you remember, I told you just now.... The
Abbe Foucquet--dear old man! Saved them for me... that and a little
money which I had... he took charge of them... he said he would place
them in safety with the ornaments of his church, and now I see them
round that woman's neck... I know that he would not have parted with
them save with his life."

All the while that the young girl spoke in a voice half-choked with
sobs, Marguerite tried with all the physical and mental will at her
command to drag her out of the room and thus to put a summary ending to
this unpleasant scene. She ought to have felt angry with Juliette for
this childish and senseless outburst, were it not for the fact that
somehow she knew within her innermost heart that all this had been
arranged and preordained: not by Fate--not by a Higher Hand, but by the
most skilful intriguer present-day France had ever known.

And even now, as she was half succeeding in turning Juliette away from
the sight of Candeille, she was not the le