d at first taken in this fete!

The baron was giving it to set a public seal on his diplomatic
position, for hitherto he had not been definitely attached to his
embassy; now he was to be the accredited ambassador of a certain
foreign power. Also he intended to announce the betrothal of the young
couple.

Alas! this latter project had suffered shipwreck!

As Wilhelmine sat in lonely state in the library, she saw a dismal
future opening before her. Not only had her heart been torn by the
brusque rupture with Henri de Loubersac, but everything which made up
her home life, such as it was, seemed falling to pieces.... No doubt
the diplomat was obliged to be continually absent, but Wilhelmine
suffered from this solitude, this abandonment.... She had become
attached to the gay and companionable Mademoiselle Berthe, who had
been the life and soul of the house. She had disappeared: no tidings
of her doings or whereabouts had reached Wilhelmine. There must be
some very serious reason for this....

The mysterious occurrences of the past weeks had altered her world,
shaken it to its insecure foundations, and inevitably affected her
outlook. Life seemed a melancholy thing: how gloomy, how helpless her
outlook!

More than ever before she felt in every fibre of her being that she
was not the daughter of the baron de Naarboveck, that she was indeed
Therese Auvernois. But what a fatal destiny must be hers! An existence
open to the attacks of misfortune, at the mercy of a being, enigmatic,
indefatigable, who, time and again, had thrown his horrible influence
across her destiny, was throwing it now--the sinister Fantomas!

Wilhelmine was torn from her miserable reflections by the irruption of
a domestic, who announced:

"Monsieur de Loubersac is asking if Mademoiselle can receive him!"

Wilhelmine rose from the divan on which she had been reclining. In an
expressionless voice she said:

"Show him in."

When the young officer of cuirassiers appeared, his air was
embarrassed, his head was bent.

"You here, Monsieur?" Wilhelmine's voice and manner expressed
indignation.

But Henri de Loubersac was no longer the arrogant unbeliever of the
Saint-Sulpice interview.

"Excuse me!" he murmured.

"What do you want?" demanded Wilhelmine, her head held high.

"Your forgiveness," he said in a voice barely audible.

De Loubersac had come to his senses.

His intense jealousy had distorted his judgment.

Desperate after the Saint