d.

Sooner or later (so ran Diantha's borrowed reasoning) the criminal who has
close friends, a wife, a mistress, children, family ties of any sort, or
even body-servants, must willy-nilly repose confidence in one of these, and
then inevitably will be betrayed. Depend upon envy, jealousy, spite, or
plain venal disloyalty, if accident or inadvertence fail, to lay the
law-breaker by the heels.

Therefore (Diantha argued) the Lone Wolf must be a confirmed solitary and
misogynist--very much like this Monsieur Lanyard, according to reports
which declared the latter to be a man who kept to himself, had many
acquaintances and not one intimate, and was positively insulated against
wiles of woman.

But--granting all this--it was none the less true that the utmost
diligence, spurred by the pique, ill-will, and ambition of the police of
all Europe, had failed as yet to forge any link between the supercriminal
of the age and the distinguished connoisseur of art. Other than Lady
Diantha and the gossips whose arguments she was retailing, never a soul (so
far as Sofia knew) had ventured to breathe a breath of suspicion upon the
good repute of Monsieur Lanyard.

In short, Diantha's conjectures had been entirely second-hand, and not even
meant to be taken seriously.

And yet the suggestion had fastened firm hold upon the imagination of the
Princess Sofia.

If it were true ... what an adventure!

There was unaccustomed light of daring in the eyes of the princess,
unwonted colour tinted her cheeks.

The hansom stopped, discharged the fairest fare it had ever carried, and
rattled off, leaving Sofia just a trifle daunted and dubious, the animation
of her anticipations something dashed by the uncompromising respectability,
the self-conscious worthiness of Halfmoon Street.

Enfolded in the very heart of Mayfair, its brief length bounded on the
north by Curzon Street (its name alone sufficient voucher for its
character), on the south by Piccadilly (hereabouts somewhat oppressive with
its hedge of stately clubs, membership in any one of which is equivalent to
two years' unchallenged credit) Halfmoon Street is largely given over to
furnished lodgings. But it doesn't advertise the fact, its landlords are
apt to be retired butlers to the nobility and gentry, its lodgers English
gentlemen who have brought home livers from India, or assorted disabilities
from all known quarters of the globe, and who desire nothing better than to
lead stea