Madame de Sevenie inclined her head.  “It must be as monsieur thinks best.”

“But Monsieur Monk!” madame la comtesse exclaimed with vivacity:  “do you know what I have just discovered?  You and Madame de Montalais are compatriots.  She is of your New York.  You must know each other.”

“I have been wondering,” Monk admitted, bowing to Eve, “if it were possible I could be misled by a strong resemblance.”

Eve turned to him with a look of surprise.  “Yes, monsieur?”

“It is many years ago, you were a young girl then, if it was truly you, madame; but I have a keen eye for beauty, I do not soon forget it ...  I was in the private office of my friend, Edmund Anstruther, of Cottier’s, one afternoon, selecting a trinket with his advice, and—­”

“That was my father, monsieur.”

“Then it was you, madame; I felt sure of it.  You came in unannounced, to see your father.  He made me known to you as a friend of his, and requested you to wait in an adjoining office.  But that was not necessary, I had already made up my mind, I left almost immediately.  Do you by any chance remember?”

The effort of the memory knitted Eve’s brows; but in the end she shook her head.  “I am sorry, monsieur—­”

“But why should you be?  Why should you have remembered me?  You were a young girl, then, as I say, and I already a man of middle age.  You saw me once, for perhaps two minutes.  It would have been a miracle had I remained in your memory for as long as a single day.  Nevertheless, I remembered.”

“I am so glad to meet a friend of my father’s, monsieur.”

“And I to recall myself to his daughter.  I have often wondered ...  Would you mind telling me something, Madame de Montalais?”

“If I can...”

“Your father and I entertained one passion in common, one which he was better able than I to gratify, for good diamonds and emeralds.  I have often wondered what became of his collection.  He had some superb stones.”

“I inherited them, monsieur.”

“They did not find their way into Cottier’s stock, then?”

The Comtesse de Lorgnes gave a gesture of excitement.  “But what a fortunate woman!  You truly have those magnificent emeralds, those almost matchless diamonds, of which one has heard—­the Anstruther collection?”

“I have them, Madame la Comtesse,” said Eve with a smiling nod—­“yes.”

“But, one presumes, in Paris, in some impregnable strong-box.”

“No, madame, here.”

“But not here, Madame de Montalais!” To this Eve gave another nod and smile.  “But are you not afraid—?”

“Of what, madame?  That they will be stolen?  No.  They have been in my possession for years—­indeed, I should be unhappy otherwise, for I have inherited my father’s fondness for them—­and nobody has ever even attempted to steal them.”

“But what of the affair at Montpellier the other night?” enquired the Comte de Lorgnes—­“that terrible attack upon you of which Madame de Sevenie has just told us?  Surely you would call that an attempt to steal.”