which had the night before so stirred his pulses.

Posed with consummate grace in a comfortless chair, a figure of slender
elegance in her half-mourning, she had narrated quietly her version of
last night's misadventure, an occasional tremor of humour lightening
the moving modulations of her voice. A deep and vibrant voice,
contralto in quality, hinting at hidden treasures of strength in the
woman whose superficial mind it expressed. A fair woman, slim but
round, with brown eyes level and calm, a translucent skin of matchless
texture, hair the hue of bronze laced with intimations of gold ...

Her story told, and taken down in longhand by a withered clerk, she
supplied without reluctance or trace of embarrassment such intimate
personal information as was necessary in order that her signature to
the document might be acceptable to the State.

Her age, she said, was twenty-nine; her birthplace, the City of New
York; her parents, Edmund Anstruther, once of Bath, England, but at the
time of her birth a naturalised citizen of the United States, and Eve
Marie Anstruther, née Legendre, of Paris. Both were dead. In June 1914
she had married, in Paris, Victor Maurice de Montalais, who had been
killed in action at La Fère-Champenoise on the ninth of September
following. Her home? The Château de Montalais.

On the hand she stripped in order to sign her deposition Duchemin saw a
blue diamond of such superb water that this amateur of precious stones
caught his breath for sheer wonder at its beauty and excellence and
worth. Such jewels, he knew, were few and far to seek outside the
collections of princes.