Page:The fortunes of Fifi (IA fortunesoffifi00seawiala).pdf/98

 *ing her treasured box, took out an old white wig, and clasping it to her bosom, rocked to and fro in an agony. There was but one thing in the box that was not hers, and that was a wooden javelin which Cartouche had used with great effect in his part of the centurion of the Pretorian Guard. It was rather a commonplace looking javelin in the cold light of day, but Fifi held that, too, to her breast; it was those things that kept her from losing her mind; they made her feel that after all, the old life existed, and was not a nightmare, like the present.

With the moral support of the wig and the javelin she was enabled to compose herself, and to meet Madame Bourcet and Louis Bourcet, the nephew, and as Fifi shrewdly suspected, the person assigned to become the future owner of her hundred thousand francs. But Fifi had some ideas of her own concerning her marriage, which, although lying dormant for a time, were far from moribund.

For this first evening in her snuff-colored house, Fifi, with a heavy heart, put on her best gown; it was very red and very skimpy, but Fifi had been