MERCY,--I am writing in a perturbed state of
mind, for I think I shall get for you a great fortune. You do not
answer my letters, though I have written at the lowest estimate ten
thousand times. I want the date of your first marriage securely
stated in written evidence; also the dates of the birth and death
of the child. I want every scrap of paper which you have,
concerning that sad affair of thirty years ago, ready for me when I
arrive in Paris two weeks from to-day.

There is a little girl over there studying music in whom I want you
to interest yourself. Her name is Katrine Dulany. She is with
Josef.

Yours of the Shamrock,
DERMOTT MCDERMOTT.

The Countess de Nemours' house in Paris stood in the centre of the
street of the Two Repentant Magdalens. An iron door in a griffoned arch
opened into a sunny court-yard, where peacocks strutted by an old
fountain, and a black poodle, who was both a thief and a miser, snarled
at the passers-by.

On the right of the entrance, in a kind of sentry-box, Quantrelle the
Red acted as _concierge_. He was a man above the peasant class,
ridiculously long and spare, with an unbroken record for thirty years of
drunkenness and quarrelling. His narrow head was covered with irregular
tufts of scarlet hair, and in his forehead were heavy furrows which
curved down over the nose and waved upward and back to the temple. His
eyebrows were red tufts standing fiercely out over his little red-brown
eyes, and his nose, long, lean, and absurdly pointed, seemed peering at
his great teeth, yellowed by much smoking of cigarettes. He added to his
charms an attire intentionally bizarre, for he dressed himself, so to
speak, in character. And with these natural and achieved drawbacks to
his appearance he had the temper of a wasp, so that it was small wonder
that questionings were rife as to the reason of his retention, his
_overpaid_ retention, in the De Nemours' household. He had a wit of his
own, had Quantrelle. Frequently his pleasing fancy led him to admit
visitors when he knew Madame de Nemours to be absent, and, after
conducting them by some circuitous route to unexpected rooms, he would
leave them waiting until discovered by any chance domestic who happened
by. And when they were ushered forth to the street he would follow them
with a torrent of shrill apology, retiring, in a paroxysm of silent
laughter, behind the shutters of his lit