brary table....
What did it contain?"

I managed an evasive reply, for the discovery opened possibilities that
disturbed me.

"Some certificates, I believe," I said.

My sister made a little pretended gesture of dismay.

"I should have been more careful; such things are of value."

Of value indeed! The certificates in Madame Barras' package, that had
lain about on the library table, were gold certificates of the United
States Treasury--ninety odd of them, each of a value of one thousand
dollars! My sister went:

"How oddly life has tossed her about.... She must have been a mere
infant at Miss Page's. The attachment of incoming tots to the older
girls was a custom.... I do not recall her.... There was always a string
of mites with shiny pigtails and big-eyed wistful faces. The older
girls never thought very much about them. One has a swarm-memory,
but individuals escape one. The older girl, in these schools, fancied
herself immensely. The little satellite that attached itself, with its
adoration, had no identity. It had a nickname, I think, or a number....
I have forgotten. We minimized these midges out of everything that could
distinguish them.... Fancy one of these turning up in Madame Barras and
coming to me on the memory of it."

"It was extremely lucky for her," I said. "Imagine arriving from the
interior of Brazil on the invitation of Mrs. Jordan to find that lady
dead and buried; with no friend, until, by chance, one happened on your
name in the social register, and ventured on a school attachment of
which there might remain, perhaps a memory only on the infant's side."

My sister went on up the stair.

"I am glad we happened to be here, and, especially, Winthrop, if you
have been able to assist her.... She is charming."

Charming was the word descriptive of my sister, for it is a thing of
manner from a nature elevated and noble, but it was not the word for
Madame Barras. The woman was a lure. I mean the term in its large and
catholic sense. I mean the bait of a great cosmic impulse--the most
subtle and the most persistent of which one has any sense.

The cunning intelligences of that impulse had decked her out with
every attractiveness as though they had taken thought to confound all
masculine resistance; to sweep into their service those refractory units
that withheld themselves from the common purpose. She was lovely, as the
aged Major Carrington had uttered it--great violet eyes in a delicate
ski