e been too much for me, and I fainted."

But Lydia was not satisfied.

"I can't understand Mr. Jaggs myself," she said, but Jean interrupted
her with a cry.

Lydia looked up and saw her eyes shining and her lips parting in a
smile.

"Of course," she said softly. "He used to sleep at your flat, didn't
he?"

"Yes, why?" asked the girl in surprise.

"What a fool I am, what a perfect fool!" said Jean, startled out of her
accustomed self-possession.

"I don't quite know where your folly comes in, but perhaps you will tell
me," but Jean was laughing softly.

"Go on and make your will," she said mockingly. "And when you've
finished we'll go into the rooms and chase the lucky numbers. Poor dear
Mrs. Cole-Mortimer is feeling a little neglected, too, we ought to do
something for her."

The day and night passed without any untoward event. In the evening Jean
had an interview with her French chauffeur, and afterwards disappeared
into her room. Lydia tapping at her door to bid her good night received
no answer.

Day was breaking when old Jaggs came out from the trees in his furtive
way and glancing up and down the road made his halting way toward Monte
Carlo. The only objects in sight was a donkey laden with market produce
led by a bare-legged boy who was going in the same direction as he.

A little more than a mile along the road he turned sharply to the right
and began climbing a steep and narrow bridle path which joined the
mountain road, half-way up to La Turbie. The boy with the donkey turned
off to the main road and continued the steep climb toward the Grande
Corniche. There were many houses built on the edge of the road and
practically on the edge of precipices, for the windows facing the sea
often looked sheer down for two hundred feet. At first these dwellings
appeared in clusters, then as the road climbed higher, they occurred at
rare intervals.

The boy leading the donkey kept his eye upon the valley below, and from
time to time caught a glimpse of the old man who had now left the bridle
path, and was picking his way up the rough hill-side. He was making for
a dilapidated house which stood at one of the hairpin bends of the road,
and the donkey-boy, shading his eyes from the glare of the rising sun,
saw him disappear into what must have been the cellar of the house,
since the door through which he went was a good twenty feet beneath the
level of the road. The donkey-boy continued his climb, tugging at his