“Yes, it is a good thing that I am pretty,” repeated the girl.  “We have had many hopes often before, but this seems to be the most promising.  I think it is very promising indeed, and I don’t mean to let it slip.”

She turned her back to the easy chair, and opened the pink bag.  As the woman talked on, she secretly counted out the money.  There were more than ten thousand francs in mille notes and others of smaller denominations.  Quietly she put them away in the top of a travelling box, which she locked.  Then she noticed the letter which the child had given her, still lying on the dressing table, with her gloves.

“Here’s something from la belle Americaine, upstairs,” said she.  “A billet doux.”

“A dun,” exclaimed the woman.

“No doubt.  It can be nothing else.”

“Well, we can’t pay.”

“No, we can’t pay,” said the girl, looking at the locked box.

“Let me see, how much was it she lent?”

“Two hundred francs, I think.  We told her we’d give it back in a week.  That’s nearly a month ago.”

“Serve her right for trusting strangers.  The saints alone know when she’ll see her money again.  She shouldn’t be so soft hearted.  It doesn’t pay in these days.”

“Neither do we—­when we can help it.”

They both laughed.

“But when you are Madame—­let me see, what was the name of the young monsieur, they told you at the Ritz?”

“Egerton.”

“Ah yes.  When you are Madame Egerton—­”

“Everything will be very different then.”

And the girl slipped the key of the box into the little pink bag.

[Illustration:  CHAPTER FOUR]

DOGS AND FATHERS

[Illustration:  A]

After delivering her letter, the child went slowly on downstairs, to the room she had been on the way to visit.  It was on the second floor, just under the room of the Comtesse de Lavalette.

“Come in,” said a Cockney voice shrill with youth, in answer to her tap; and the child obeyed.

Though this room was of the same size and shape, it was very different from that of the Comtesse.  The plain furniture was stiffly arranged, and there was no litter of clothing or small feminine belongings.  By the window, which gave a glimpse of the sea, and of Monaco rock with the old part of the Palace, a plump young girl sat, with a baby a year or two old in her arms, and a nurse’s cap on her smooth head.

“You invited me to come down after I’d had my dejeuner, so I came,” said the child.

“Right you are, Miss Rosemary,” returned the plump girl.  “You’re such a quaint little body, you’re a regular treat.  I declare I ain’t ’alf sure I wouldn’t rather talk to you, than read the Princess Novelettes.  Besides, I do get that tired of ‘earin’ nothin’ but French, I’m most sorry I undertook the job; and the Biby don’t pick up English much yet.”