nal
personality.

* * * * *

It was with a feeling of considerable excitement and curiosity that the
diplomatist, that same evening, walked up the quiet, now deserted,
streets where dwelt the most famous of Parisian fortune-tellers.

Madame d'Elphis had chosen a prosaic setting for the scene of her
mysteries, for the large white house looked very new, a huge wedge of
modern ugliness in the pretty old street, its ugliness made the more
apparent by its proximity to one of those leafy gardens which form oases
of fragrant stillness in the more ancient quarters of the town.

A curt answer was given by the concierge in reply to Vanderlyn's enquiry
for Madame d'Elphis. "Walk through the courtyard; the person you seek
occupies the entresol of the house you will see there."

And then he saw that lying back, quite concealed from the street, was
another and very different type of dwelling, and one far more suited to
the requirements of even a latter-day soothsayer.

As he made his way over the dimly-lighted, ill-paved court which
separated the new building, that giving onto the street, from the
seventeenth-century mansion, Vanderlyn realised that his first
impression had been quite erroneous. Madame d'Elphis had evidently
gauged, and that very closely, the effect she desired to produce on her
patrons. Even in the daytime the mansarded house which now gloomed
before him must look secret, mysterious. Behind such narrow latticed
windows might well have dwelt Cagliostro, or, further back, the more
sinister figure of La Voison.

But something of this feeling left him as he passed through the door
which gave access to the old house; and, as he began to walk up the
shabby gas-lit staircase, he felt that his repugnant task would be an
easy one. The woman who, living here, allowed herself the luxury of such
a lover as was the Marquis de Florac, would not--nay, could
not--hesitate before such an offer as ten thousand francs.

There was but one door on the entresol, and on its panel was inscribed
in small gold letters the word "d'Elphis." As Vanderlyn rang the bell,
the odd name gleamed at him in the gas-light.

There followed a considerable delay, but at last he saw a face peering
at him through the little grating--significantly styled a _Judas_, and
doubtless dating from the Revolution,--still to be found in many an
old-fashioned Parisian front-door.

The inspection having apparently proved satisf