"Madame Valière is not returned?" she cried.
"No letter in her writing has come--for anybody."
"_O mon Dieu!_ She has been murdered. She _would_ go alone by night."
"She owes me three weeks' rent," grimly returned Madame la Propriétaire.
"What do you insinuate?" Madame Dépine's eyes flared.
Madame la Propriétaire shrugged her shoulders. "I am not at my first communion. I have grown grey in the service of lodgers. And this is how they reward me." She called Jacques, who had followed uneasily in Madame Dépine's wake. "Is there anything in the room?"
"Yes; did I never tell you of her? A handsome creature, but she threw her bonnet over the mills."
"The Princess, too. Her bonnet will also be found lying there."
"No, no; I mean I thought the portrait was the Princess's."
Madame la Propriétaire laughed. "She told you so?"
"Without doubt, she gave you the idea. _Quelle farceuse!_ I don't believe there ever was a Princess. The family was always inflated."
All Madame Dépine's world seemed toppling. Somehow her own mistake added to her sense of having been exploited.
"Still," said Madame la Propriétaire with a shrug, "it is only three weeks' rent."
"If you lose it, I will pay!" Madame Dépine had an heroic burst of faith.
"As you please. But I ought to have been on my guard. Where did she take the funds for a grey wig?"
"Ah, the brown wig!" cried Madame Dépine, joyfully. "She must have left that behind, and any _coiffeur_ will give you three weeks' rent for that alone."
"We shall see," replied Madame la Propriétaire, ambiguously.
The trio mounted the stairs, and hunted high and low, disturbing the peaceful spider-webs. They peered under the very bed. Not even the old block was to be seen. As far as Madame Valière's own chattels were concerned, the room was indeed "empty as an egg-shell."
"She has carried it away with the three weeks' rent," sneered Madame la Propriétaire. "In my own carpet-bag," she added with a terrible recollection.
"She wished to wear it at night against the hard back of the carriage, and guard the other all glossy for the wedding." Madame Dépine quavered pleadingly, but she could not quite believe herself.
"The wedding had no more existence than the Princess," returned Madame la Propriétaire, believing herself more and more.