She hesitated. If she gave her real name the papers would at once be full of her loss.
“Deitel,” she answered. “Baroness Deitel of Frankfort.”
“And to what hotel is Madame going?”
She reflected a moment. If she went to Ritz’s or the Bristol she would surely be recognised. She had heard that the Terminus, at the Gare St. Lazare, was a large and cosmopolitan place, where tourists stayed, so she would go there.
“To the Terminus,” was her reply.
Then, promising to report to her if any information were forthcoming after the circulation of the description of the thief and of the stolen property, he assisted her in obtaining her trunk, called a fiacre for her, apologised that she should have suffered such loss, and then bowed her away.
She pressed the child close to her, and staring straight before her, held her breath.
Was it not a bad augury for the future? With the exception of a French bank-note for a thousand francs in her purse and a little loose change, she was penniless as well as friendless.
At the hotel she engaged a single room, and remained in to rest after her long, tiring journey. With a mother’s tender care her first thought was for little Ignatia, who had stood wondering at the scene at the station, and who, when her mother afterwards explained that the thief had run away with her bag, declared that he was “a nasty, bad man.”
On gaining her room at the hotel the Princess put her to bed, but she remained very talkative, watching her mother unpack the things she had purchased in Lucerne.