“Has she socialistic ideas?  Can her hatred be for some of our plutocrats or supposed oppressors of the people?”

“Oh, no; she is of aristocratic descent and proud of her order.  The Duclos are bourgeois, but Antoinette is a De Montfort.”

Mr. Gryce suppressed all token of his instinctive amazement.  This fine American woman was not without a sense of reflected glory given by this fact.  Her sister-in-law was a De Montfort!  Expressing his thanks for her candor, he rose to depart.

“For all that,” said he, “she may be at heart a revolutionnaire.”  Then, as he noticed the negation in her look, he added softly:  “The least clue as to her present refuge would make me greatly your debtor.”

“I cannot give it; I do not know it.”

And somehow he believed her as absolutely as even she could desire.  If he should yet be fortunate enough to find this elusive Madame, it would have to be through some other agency than these relatives of hers by marriage.

As he passed out, he heard a frightened gasp from somewhere back in the hall.  Turning, he asked in the most natural manner whether there were children in the house.

Mrs. Duclos answered with some dignity that she had three daughters.

“You are fortunate, madame,” he remarked with his old-fashioned bow.  “I live alone.  My last grandchild left me a year ago for a man many years my junior.”

This brought the little one into his view.  She was smiling, and he went away in a state of relief marred by but one regret: 

He was as ignorant as ever where to look for the mother of Angeline.

XX

MR. GRYCE AND THE UNWARY WOMAN

Nevertheless Mr. Gryce was proud of the gain he had made in his talk with Mrs. Duclos, and he smiled as he thought of his next interview with Sweetwater.  Assurance will often accomplish much, it is true, but it sometimes needs age to make it effective.  He could not imagine either Mrs. Duclos or her daughter yielding to the blandishments of one even as gifted in this special direction as Sweetwater.  Authority was needed as well—­the authority of long experience and an ineradicable sympathy with human nature.

Thus he gratified himself with a few complacent thoughts.  But when he stopped to think what a great haystack New York was, and how elusive was the needle which had escaped them now these three times, his spirits sank a trifle, and by the time he had ridden a half-block on his way back to Headquarters, he was at that low ebb of disheartenment from which only some happy inspiration can effectually lift one.  He was glad to be able to report that he had learned a few important facts in regard to Madame Duclos, but he equally hated to admit that for all his haste in following up the clue given him, he knew as little as ever of her present whereabouts; and hated even worse to have to give the cue which would lead to a surveillance, however secret, over a house which held a child of so sensitive and tremulous a nature as that of the little friend who had picked up his stick in front of the drug-store.