"No, no; but--but I imagined so."
"Without doubt, she gave you the idea. _Quelle farceuse!_ I don't
believe there ever was a Princess. The family was always inflated."
All Madame Depine's world seemed toppling. Somehow her own mistake
added to her sense of having been exploited.
"Still," said Madame la Proprietaire with a shrug, "it is only three
weeks' rent."
"If you lose it, I will pay!" Madame Depine had an heroic burst of
faith.
"As you please. But I ought to have been on my guard. Where did she
take the funds for a grey wig?"
"Ah, the brown wig!" cried Madame Depine, joyfully. "She must have
left that behind, and any _coiffeur_ will give you three weeks' rent
for that alone."
"We shall see," replied Madame la Proprietaire, ambiguously.
The trio mounted the stairs, and hunted high and low, disturbing the
peaceful spider-webs. They peered under the very bed. Not even the
old block was to be seen. As far as Madame Valiere's own chattels were
concerned, the room was indeed "empty as an egg-shell."
"She has carried it away with the three weeks' rent," sneered Madame
la Proprietaire. "In my own carpet-bag," she added with a terrible
recollection.
"She wished to wear it at night against the hard back of the carriage,
and guard the other all glossy for the wedding." Madame Depine
quavered pleadingly, but she could not quite believe herself.
"The wedding had no more existence than the Princess," returned Madame
la Proprietaire, believing herself more and more.
"Then she will have cheated me out of the grey wig from the first,"
cried Madame Depine, involuntarily. "And I who sacrificed myself to
her!"
"_Comment!_ It was your wig?"
"No, no." She flushed and stammered. "But _enfin_--and then, oh,
heaven! my brooch!"
"She has stolen your brooch?"
Great tears rolled down the wrinkled, ashen cheeks. So this was
her reward for secretly instructing the _coiffeur_ to make the
"Princess's" wig first. The Princess, indeed! Ah, the adventuress! She
felt choking; she shook her fist in the air. Not even the brooch to
show when her family came up from Tonnerre, to say nothing of the wig.
Was there a God in the world at all? Oh, holy Mother! No wonder the
trickstress would not be escorted to the station--she never went to
the station. No wonder she would not sell the royal secrets to the
journalist--there were none to sell. Oh! it was all of a piece.
"If I were you I should go to the bureau of police!" said Madame la
Proprietaire.
Yes, she would go; the wretch should be captured, should be haled to
gaol. Even her half of the Louis Quinze timepiece recurred to poor
Madame Depine's brain.
"Add that she has stolen my carpet-bag."
The local bureau telegraphed first to Tonnerre.
There had been the wedding, but no Madame Valiere. She had accepted
the invitation, had given notice of her arrival; one had awaited the
midnight train. The family was still wondering why the rich aunt had
turned sulky at the last hour. But she was always an eccentric; a
capricious and haughty personage.
Poor Madame Depine's recurrent "My wig! my brooch!" reduced the
official mind to the same muddle as her own.
"No doubt a sudden impulse of senescent kleptomania," said the
superintendent, sagely, when he had noted down for transference to
headquarters Madame Depine's verbose and vociferous description of
the traits and garments of the runagate. "But we will do our best
to recover your brooch and your wig." Then, with a spasm of supreme
sagacity, "Without doubt they are in the carpet-bag."