“Yes, sir; and you who know everything are the only person in the world who can save me.  You were so kind to me yesterday that I ventured to come here before the time appointed, in order to entreat your help.”

“But what do you think I can do?”

“Everything, sir; but let me tell you the whole hideous complication.”

Mascarin’s face assumed an air of the deepest interest, as he answered, “Go on.”

“After our interview,” began Paul, “I went back to the Hotel de Perou, and on the mantelpiece in my garret found this note from Rose.”

He held it out as he spoke, but Mascarin made no effort to take it.

“In it,” resumed Paul, “Rose tells me she no longer loves me, and begs me not to seek to see her again; and also that, wearied out of poverty, she has accepted the offer of unlimited supplies of money, a carriage, and diamonds.”

“Are you surprised at this?” asked Mascarin, with a sneer.

“How could I anticipate such an infidelity, when only the evening before she swore by all she held most sacred that she loved me only?  Why did she lie to me?  Did she write to make the blow fall heavier?  When I ascended the staircase, I was picturing to myself her joy when I told her of your kind promises to me.  For more than an hour I remained in my garret, overwhelmed with the terrible thought that I should never see her again.”

Mascarin watched Paul attentively, and came to the conclusion that his words were too fine for his grief to be sincere.

“But what about the accusation of theft?”

“I am coming to that,” returned the young man.  “I then determined to obey your injunctions and leave the Hotel de Perou, with which I was more than ever disgusted.  I went downstairs to settle with Madame Loupins, when ah! hideous disgrace!  As I handed her the two weeks’ rent, she asked me with a contemptuous sneer, where I had stolen the money from?”

Mascarin secretly chuckled over the success of his plans thus announced by Paul.

“What did you say?” asked he.

“Nothing, sir; I was too horror-stricken; the man Loupins came up, and both he and his wife scowled at me threateningly.  After a short pause, they asserted that they were perfectly sure that Rose and I had robbed M. Tantaine.”

“But did you not deny this monstrous charge?”

“I was utterly bewildered, for I saw that every circumstance was against me.  The evening before, Rose, in reply to Madame Loupin’s importunities, had told her that she had no money, and did not know where to get any.  But, as you perceive, on the very next day I appeared in a suit of new clothes, and was prepared to pay my debts, while Rose had left the house some hours before.  Does not all this form a chain of strange coincidences?  Rose changed the five hundred franc note that Tantaine had lent me at the shop of a grocer, named Melusin, and this suspicious fool was the first to raise a cry against us, and dared to assert that a detective had been ordered to watch us.”