She tried to show a sympathetic smile, but in it there was little
actual sympathy. "Very natural that you should think so," she
admitted. "It came as a great shock--and a surprise--even to me. I had
thought she was unusually well-bred, refined." She sighed, as if the
world were rather hard on her, to fool her so in one she had believed
to be an admirable person. "But let me tell you that she has great
admiration for fine jewels. I have noted that, before. And--the
temptation was too strong for her. Weak spot, somewhere, in her, don't
you see? It was too strong for that weak spot."

"Oh, Madame, I--"

She raised her hand as if to ward away his protests. Clearly she
believed that having told him all about it, as gently as she had, she
had accomplished her whole Christian duty and was under not the
slightest further obligation to be merciful. "I may as well tell you,"
she warned him, "that I brought an officer with me. To save your
natural feelings, I requested him to wait downstairs a moment and then
to come and wait outside the door--er--um--in case of trouble. Just a
little necessary precaution, my dear sir. A woman, coming to a place
like this, alone, you see--"

He smiled. "Quite natural," he answered. "Why, I might have eaten
you!" But in the absorption of his talk with her he had forgotten
that, as he went to the door, he had seen a blue coat and brass
buttons, had recognized the face of his old enemy, Moresco. Now the
realization that, armed and uniformed, a minion of the forces of the
city's law and order, that cheap foe was actually waiting for his
little Anna--for his gentle, big-eyed, soft-voiced Anna!--came to him
with a new and dreadful shock. His frame stiffened and his poor old,