“Good-night,” she said, rather coldly.  “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Set a thief to catch a thief,” reflected Steinmetz.  He said nothing, however, when he shook hands.

They mounted their horses and rode back the way they had come.  For half an hour no one spoke.  Then Paul broke the silence.  He only said one word: 

“D—­n.”

“Yes,” returned Steinmetz quietly.  “Charity is a dangerous plaything.”

CHAPTER XIV

A WIRE-PULLER

The Palace of Industry—­where, with a fine sense of the fitness of the name, the Parisians amuse themselves—­was in a blaze of electric light and fashion.  The occasion was the Concours Hippique, an ultra-equine fete, where the lovers of the friend of man, and such persons as are fitted by an ungenerous fate with limbs suitable to horsey clothes, meet and bow.  In France, as in a neighboring land (less sunny), horsiness is the last refuge of the diminutive.  It is your small man who is ever the horsiest in his outward appearance, just as it is your very plain young person who is keenest at the Sunday-school class.

When a Frenchman is horsey he never runs the risk of being mistaken for a groom or a jockey, as do his turfy compeers in England.  His costume is so exaggeratedly suggestive of the stable and the horse as to leave no doubt whatever that he is an amateur of the most pronounced type.  His collar is so white and stiff and portentous as to make it impossible for him to tighten up his own girths.  His breeches are so breechy about the knees as to render an ascent to the saddle a feat which it is not prudent to attempt without assistance.  His gloves are so large and seamy as to make it extremely difficult to grasp the bridle, and quite impossible to buckle a strap.  Your French horseman is, in fact, rather like a knight of old, inasmuch as his attendants are required to set him on his horse with his face turned in the right direction, his bridle in his left hand, his whip in his right, and, it is to be supposed, his heart in his mouth.  When he is once up there, however, the gallant son of Gaul can teach even some of us, my fox-hunting masters, the way to sit a horse!

We have, however, little to do with such matters here, except in so far as they affect the persons connected with this record.  The Concours Hippique, be it therefore known, was at its height.  Great deeds of horsemanship had been successfully accomplished.  The fair had smiled beneath pencilled eyebrows upon the brave in uniform and breeches.  At the time when we join the fashionable throng, the fair are smiling their brightest.  It is, in fact, an interval for refreshment.

A crowd of well-dressed men jostled each other good-naturedly around a long table, where insolent waiters served tepid coffee, and sandwiches that had been cut by the hand of a knave.  In the background a number of ladies nodded encouragement to their cavaliers in the intervals of scrutinizing each other’s dresses.  Many pencilled eyebrows were raised in derision of too little style displayed by some innocent rival, or brought down in disapproval of too much of the same vague quality displayed by one less innocent.