In September I got the key to the mystery. The necessity of floating some bonds took me abroad again. I found my family ensconced in beautiful luxury in an apartment in Paris. You drove out the Champs Elysées. Not far from the President’s palace you drove in at great doors--not gates, but doors--in a plain, unpretentious-looking house wall. You were in a superb garden of whose existence you had no hint from the street. Magnificent bronze inner doors--powdered and velveted lackeys--a majestic stairway leading to lofty and gorgeous corridors and salons. Really my wife, with the aid of those clever European professors of the aristocratic art, had educated herself amazingly. On every side there were evidences of her good taste in furniture, in tapestries, in wall coverings, in pictures. It was not the taste of a home maker, but it was unquestionably good taste. It was not the sort of taste I liked, but not to admire it would have been to lack the sense of harmony in line and color. And let me add in justice to her, it was her own taste. There is no mistaking the difference between the luxury that is merely bought and the luxury that is created. I submitted with what grace I could muster to the exuberant hypocrisies of that greeting. But I got to business with all speed. “In the note I found in London you said you had a surprise for me,” I said to Edna. “What is it?” “How impatient you are,” laughed she. “Just like a child.” Whether because the fashions of the day happened to be peculiarly becoming or because she had actually improved, she now had the loveliness more exquisite than I had ever seen in woman. No doubt her piquant face had charm for most people; for me it had none whatever. I knew too well what lay beneath--or, rather, what was not there, for like most human beings her defects of character were not so much the presence of the vices as the lack of the virtues. “I’ve been waiting for that surprise several months,” said I. “Your letters and Margot’s showed that some shock was coming.” “Shock? No, indeed!” And she and Margot laughed gayly. “It isn’t altogether a surprise,” she went on. “Can’t you guess?” I looked at Margot. “Ah!” I said. “Margot is engaged.” Margot ran across the room and kissed me. “Oh, I’m so happy, papa!” she cried. “Is it the duke?” I asked. She made a wry face. “He was horrid!” she said. “I couldn’t _endure_ him.” “So you had to fall back on the marquis?” Neither of the women liked this way of putting the matter. It suggested that I knew the painful truth of the failure of the ducal campaign. But they were not to be put out of humor. “You liked him yourself, papa,” said Margot.