Jaune found himself the most conspicuous man in New York.  During the three hours of his walk he was the centre of an interested crowd.  Several benevolent persons stopped to tell him of fatherless young women with whom they were acquainted, and to urge upon him the probability that each of these young women was his long-lost child.  The representatives of a dozen detective bureaus introduced themselves to him, and made offer of their professional services; a messenger from the chief of police handed him a polite note tendering the services of the department and inviting him to a conference.  It was maddening.

But worst of all were his meetings with Rose.  As these multiplied, the conviction became irresistible that they were not the result of chance; indeed, her manner made doubt upon this head impossible.  At first she gave him only a passing glance, then a glance somewhat longer, then a look of kindly interest, then a long look of sympathy; and at last she bestowed upon him a gentle, almost affectionate, smile that expressed, as plainly as a smile could express, her sorrow for his misery and her readiness to comfort him.  In a word, Rose Carthame’s conduct simply was outrageous!

The jealous anger which had inflamed Jattne’s breast the night before swelled and expanded into a raging passion.  He longed to engage in mortal combat this stranger who was alienating the affection that should be his.  The element of absurdity in the situation no longer was apparent to him.  In truth, as he reasoned, the situation was not absurd.  To all intents and purposes he was two people and it was the other one of him, not himself at all, who was winning Rose’s interest, perhaps her love.  For a moment the thought crossed his mind that he would adjust the difficulty in his own favor by remaining this other person always.  But the hard truth confronted him that every time he washed his face he would cease to be the elderly Marquis, with the harder truth that the fabulous wealth with which, as the Marquis, the newspapers had endowed him was too entirely fabulous to serve as a basis for substantial life.  And being thus cut off from hope, he fell back upon jealous hatred of himself.

That night the evening paper in which the first mention of the mysterious French nobleman had been made contained an article cleverly contrived to give point to the mystery in its commercial aspect.  The fact had been observed, the article declared, that the nobleman’s promenade began and ended at a prominent clothing establishment on Broadway; and then followed, in the guise of a contribution toward the clearing up of the mystery, an interview with the proprietor of the establishment in question.  However, the interview left the mystery just where it found it, for all that the tailor told was that the Marquis had bought several suits of clothes from him; that he had shown himself to be an exceptionally critical person in the matter of his wearing apparel;