“Ah, yes; a sad scrape. At that time there was a political crisis; we were under a Republic; anything against a noble was believed. But I am sure Victor de Mauleon was not the man to commit a larceny. However, it is quite true that he left Paris, and I don’t know what has become of him since.” Here he touched De Breze, who, though still near, had not been listening to this conversation, but interchanging jest and laughter with Lemercier on the motley scene of the dance. “De Breze, have you ever heard what became of poor dear Victor de Mauleon?--you knew him.” “Knew him? I should think so. Who could be in the great world and not know le beau Victor? No; after he vanished I never heard more of him; doubtless long since dead. A good-hearted fellow in spite of all his sins.” “My dear Monsieur de Breze, did you know his half-sister?” asked Graham,--“a Madame Duval?” “No. I never heard he had a half-sister. Halt there; I recollect that I met Victor once, in the garden at Versailles, walking arm-in-arm with the most beautiful girl I ever saw; and when I complimented him afterwards at the Jockey Club on his new conquest, he replied very gravely that the young lady was his niece. ‘Niece!’ said I; ‘why, there can’t be more than five or six years between you.’ ‘About that, I suppose,’ said he; ‘my half-sister, her mother, was more than twenty years older than I at the time of my birth.’ I doubted the truth of his story at the time; but since you say he really had a sister, my doubt wronged him.” “Have you never seen that same young lady since?” “Never.” “How many years ago was this?” “Let me see, about twenty or twenty-one years ago. How time flies!” Graham still continued to question, but could learn no further particulars. He turned to quit the gardens just as the band was striking up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air; and mingled with that German music his ear caught the sprightly sounds of the French laugh, one laugh distinguished from the rest by a more genuine ring of light-hearted joy, the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens, and the sound of which had then saddened him. Looking towards the quarter from which it came, he again saw the “Ondine of Paris.” She was not now the centre of a group. She had just found Gustave Rameau, and was clinging to his arm with a look of happiness in her face, frank and innocent as a child’s; and so they passed amid the dancers down a solitary lamplit alley, till lost to the Englishman’s lingering gaze. CHAPTER X. The next morning Graham sent again for M. Renard. “Well,” he cried, when that dignitary appeared and took a seat beside him, “chance has favoured me.” “I always counted on chance, Monsieur. Chance has more wit in its little finger than the Paris police in its whole body.”