An old friend of Mrs. Merriam, a cosmopolitan American woman, had once praised the Hotel Valmont, Angela had remembered; and driving from Twenty-third Street up into the Forties, New York was almost as strange to her as if she had never seen it before.

The Hotel Valmont, which Mrs. Corning had said was small, loomed imposing to Angela's eyes, as her taxicab stopped before the ever-revolving glass wheel of the Fifth Avenue door.

She asked, however, to see a morning paper, and when it came was disappointed to find no paragraph concerning the thief at the Hotel Valmont.

His name appeared on the register of the Valmont as Count von Osthaven, and he admitted an attempt to enter the room occupied by Mr. Hilliard, having reached it by a daring passage along a stone cornice, from his own window, four rooms to the left, on the twelfth storey.

" They walked back toward the shop of the snuff-boxes gloomily discussing the situation, which was complicated by the fact that, grown cautious since the attempted burglary at the Valmont, Angela had left her most valuable jewellery in a bank at New York.

" For Nick had found the angel of his dreams, and had recognized her at first glance that day in the hall of the Valmont.

"In the travel bureau of the Valmont Hotel." "Ah! Was that quiteconsiderate?

And now, when I began to explain how I inquired about you at the Valmont, as if it was from Morehouse, you didn't" "I felt there could be no explanation I'd care to hear," Angela finished for him.

DE VALMONT (Count), father of Florian and uncle of Geraldine.

When De Valmont returned and knew his losses, he became a wayward recluse, querulous, despondent, frantic at times, and at times most melancholy.

She was the wife of Count de Valmont, and mother of Florian, "the foundling of the forest."