And I have been paid. But if she offered me twice as much I
wouldn't do the thing over again; and I won't raise a finger for her if
she wants any more done. She can do her own dirty work. She said her
cousin the Duke told her his new daughter-in-law was an artist in
Dresden, and she sent me there. I got off the track a bit, but some
things I heard sent me on to St. Petersburg. There had been a Mary Gaunt
or Grant stopping there once in a hotel, with a man she wasn't married
to; that's certain--and she came with him from Paris. From Paris I
traced her--that is, I traced a Mary Grant--back to Scotland and a
convent-school. The last place I went--while Miss Bland waited here
keeping her eye on you all from a distance, and maybe spying out things
on her own account--was that convent. I raked up old gossip outside, and
I got in easily enough, for the Mother Superior and the nuns are nice to
visitors who seem interested. But the minute I began to ask questions
about a pupil in the school who'd run away, the good ladies shut up like
oysters. I had to leave defeated as far as the last part of my job was
concerned, though I'm not used to fail. One thing I did accomplish,
though: I looked hard at a picture in the reception room, with a lot of
girls in it, pupils of the school, and I memorized every face. _The
Princess was not there_; but this young lady was; and her name I find
now is Mary Grant. Unfortunately she's been a good deal talked about in
Monte Carlo, it seems.
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