.

DROPPING THE PILOT.
"The portrait of a lady," repeated Loo, slowly.

"Young and beautiful.
That much I remember." The old nobleman had never removed his covering hand from the locket.
He had never glanced at it himself.

He looked slowly round the peering faces, two and three deep round the table.

He was the oldest man present--one of the oldest in Paris--one of the few now living who had known Marie Antoinette.
Without uncovering the locket, he handed it to Barebone across the table with a bow worthy of the old regime and his own historic name.
"It is right that you should be the first to see it," he said.