When they reached the hotel-gate, a woman with a tired, but serene and sweet, face came down the twisted pine-root steps from the convent, with a little start and flush of surprise at seeing them--the ex-anarchist now a respectable, clean-shaven Briton, with a stable-cap in place of the broad felt hat, and the cloak rolled in a neatly strapped bundle. "Aha, my dear woman of mystery!" cried Ermengarde gaily, with open hands. "Found out at last! All your machinations unmasked and exposed! How are you? My best respects to you. I hear that you have been looking after a certain Mrs. Allonby--connected with _the_ Allonby, don't you know--kind of dry-nursing the poor thing! If I'm not mistaken, you found her a pretty good handful, didn't you?" "Well, pretty fair at times," she admitted, observing that Mrs. Allonby wore a diamond and pearl chain, closely resembling that flung to her by the Spaniard at the Carnival, and afterwards exposed for sale in a Monte Carlo window. "Dear Miss Somers, I was a beast about the necklace. I am so sorry." "Thought you'd sneaked the thing," Arthur blurted out with a grin, in that exasperating way of his. "I didn't," she stoutly contradicted; "I thought he had sneaked it and made _you_ the cat's paw to sell it. And, oh, my goodness, Miss Somers!" she laughed out suddenly, "if I didn't think at one time that you were this man's wife! And didn't I pity you, just! But we are not going to act charades any longer. Nobody is to be anybody else any more; no, not even that wretched young Isidore, the fraud! Ah! I wonder if Mr. Welbourne will turn out to be some discontented duke in disguise," she cried, suddenly becoming aware of the mystified countenance of the thin man, who had come by the mule-path round the convent; "I'm not cracked, Mr. Welbourne, only a little crazy. Let me introduce my husband--just arrived." The thin man congratulated and opined that the arrival was singularly opportune under the circumstances, while Arthur confessed that Mr. Welbourne's virtues had long been familiar to him through correspondence. And then, after proper comments on the weather, Arthur, with no outward sign of terror, whatever he felt, sought the awful presence of Madame Bontemps, while Ermengarde, with her heart in her mouth, and cold chills running all over her, tried to be admitted to private conference with Mlle. Geneviève, the woman of mystery acting as intermediary in this difficult piece of diplomacy. "The chain was from Spink's, after all," Mrs. Allonby admitted with a blush, observing Agatha's glance upon it, "and people with glass houses shouldn't throw stones. My husband saw the thing for sale at Poupart's, and went in and redeemed it. He knew it by a flaw in a pearl. And you may imagine I've had to sing pretty small, smaller than even the poor Boundrish this afternoon--and with better reason, I'm afraid."