“Madame la princesse didn’t know?  I’m so sorry.”

“How dare you say they’re paste?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated; “but somebody seems to have taken advantage of madame’s confidence.  Excellent imitations, I grant you, but articles de Paris none the less.”

“It isn’t true!” she stormed, near to tears.

“But really, you must believe me.  A knowledge of jewels is one of my hobbies:  I know!”

She looked down in consternation at the exquisite trinkets he had condemned so bluntly.  Then in a fit of temper she flung them from her with all her might, threw herself upon the chaise-longue, and wept passionately into its cushions.  Then the young man proved himself tolerably instructed in the ways of womankind.  He said nothing more, made no offer to comfort her by those futile and empty pats on the shoulder which are instinctive with man on such occasions, but simply sat him down and waited.

In time the tempest passed, Sofia sat up and dabbled her eyes with a web of lace and linen.  Then she looked round with a tentative smile that was wholly captivating.  She was one of those rare women who can afford to cry.

“It’s so humiliating!” she protested with racial ingenuousness—­one of her most compelling charms.  “But it’s ridiculous, too.  I was so sure no one would ever know.”

“No one but an expert ever would, madame.”

“You see”—­apparently she had forgotten that Lanyard was anything but a lifelong friend—­“I needed money so badly, I had them reproduced and sold the originals.”

“Madame la princesse—­if she will permit—­commands my profound sympathy.”

“But,” she remembered, drying her eyes, “you called me an adventuress, too!”

“But,” he contended, gravely, “you had already called me the Lone Wolf.”

“But what do you expect, monsieur, when I find you in my rooms—?”

“But what does madame la princesse expect when I find she had been to mine—­and brought something valuable away with her, too!”

“I had a reason—­”

“So had I.”

“What was it?”

“Perhaps it was to see madame la princesse alone—­secretly—­without exciting the jealousy, which I understand is supernormal, of monsieur le prince.”

“But why should you wish to see me alone?” she demanded, with widening eyes.

“Perhaps to beg madame’s permission to offer her what may possibly prove some slight consolation.”

She weighed his words in dark distrust.  What was this consolation?  What his game?  His attitude remained consistently too deferential and punctilious for one to suspect that by consolation he meant love-making.

“But how did you get in?”

“By the front door, madame.  I find it ajar—­one assumes, through oversight on the part of one of the servants—­it opens to a touch, I walk in—­et voila!”

His levity was infectious.  In spite of herself, she smiled in sympathy.