And forthwith she spread the lurid sheets before my distressed eyes. The headlines were of the variety known as "scare." Not the German ex-Kaiser himself, or even a Bolshevist labor leader was ever presented in larger type than was the lurid announcement of the attempted robbery. And all our names were mentioned--even that of Talbot--the sacred family name, which we had kept inviolate for generations against all newspaper publicity excepting only mention in the society and political columns. For, of course, the difference between one's appearing as a social or political item and as a piece of mere vulgar news must at once be apparent to any reader of refined upbringing. And never before had the Talbots been news. I dreaded to think how my sister Euphemia would take it should the article chance to meet her eye. She might eventually forgive me much; but I seriously doubted whether her charity would ever extend over newspaper headlines. Alas! This was but a foretaste of what was to come! But much as the reporters had to say of the splendor of Sebastian Markheim's mansion and the beauty of Sebastian Markheim's fiancée, whose coming marriage would be of the greatest social consequence, uniting the greatest fortune of the East with the greatest fortune of the Western Coast, and so on, and though it was further replete with details of the method by which the robbery had been committed, together with a florid account of the robber's high station in life, his heroic action in battle, where he was supposed to have been killed while defending a position single-handed in a rocky pass during the Austrian invasion, thereby enabling the rest of his brigade to escape--nothing indicated that his capture was at this time considered very likely. The authorities were full of assurances but rather short on facts, to all appearances. "Well, now, Alicia, my dear," I remarked when I had satisfied myself that no detail of importance had escaped me in my perusal of the printed account of our affair--"now, Alicia, my dear," said I. "I feel it incumbent to be quite sure that you know what you are saying when you announce your intention of linking your life with that of this wild young Italian--always provided that the gallows does not get him before you do. Can't you reconcile yourself to the idea that he is a thief, no matter how titled, and that therefore he is no match for an honest American girl?" "Oh, cut the moralizing, Free!" interrupted Peaches. "I am in love with him, I tell you. And I have sufficient faith in my own integrity to believe that this wouldn't be true if he really was the yellow dog everybody seems bent on trying to make him out. Now I've got a hunch--a mighty straight hunch that he is O. K. There's more to this than we know. Maybe the old picture belonged to his great-grandmother or something, and he's only taking it back. How do you know he isn't doing just that very thing?"