the
waist."

Edith advanced another pace into the darkest corner of the shop, quickly
arranged the shawl over her head and shoulders, and, hastily murmuring
her thanks, rushed forth into the street again, leaving hat and gloves
behind in her haste.

The fruit-seller was far too wise a woman to call after the other and
apprise her of the loss.

"It must be serious, this adventure," she mused. "And yet the novelists
say that the English are cold! For me, now, I think that women are very
much alike all over the world."

And with this bit of Provencal philosophy she picked up the discarded
articles and discovered, to her joy, that they must be worth at least
ten francs.

"Thirty-five francs for an old shawl is a good night's work," she
murmured. "Who could dream of such fortune at this hour? To-morrow I
will buy a candle and place it in the church of Notre Dame de la Garde."

Meanwhile Edith was just in time to see Mlle. Beaucaire either abandon
her search or resolve it in some manner, for the lady once more resumed
her progress towards the old harbour, in whose placid bosom could be
seen the reflections of numberless lights from the small promontory
beyond, crowned with the Fort St. Nicholas and the Chateau du Phare.

Looking neither right nor left, but hastening onwards with rapid
strides, mademoiselle crossed the rough pavement of the Quai de la
Fraternite, bearing away diagonally towards the left.

But if the Frenchwoman was a good walker, Edith Talbot was a better one,
and now that she no longer feared notice--for she draped the large shawl
as elegantly about her shoulders as any woman in Marseilles--she decided
to adopt a little strategy. Instead of keeping directly behind
mademoiselle she broke into a run under the shadow of the houses. By
thus making up ground she approached the narrow street towards which the
Frenchwoman was heading almost simultaneously with her quarry, but
apparently from an opposite direction. The aspect of the thoroughfare
through which the two women sped was forbidding in the extreme. The
houses were many storeys in height, of disreputable appearance, and so
close together on both sides that, were other conditions equal, an
active man might easily spring from one room into another across the
street.

The walls appeared to be honeycombed with doors and windows, while an
indescribable number of shutters, balconies, projecting poles and
clothes-lines created such a medley in the darkn