E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, M. M. Moffet, Mary Meehan,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
This Volume embraces my newest and oldest work, and includes—for thesake of uniformity of edition—a couple of shilling novelettes that areout of print.
I.Z.
Mentone,February, 1903.
THE GREY WIG
CHASSÉ-CROISÉ
THE WOMAN BEATER
THE ETERNAL FEMININE
THE SILENT SISTERS
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY
MERELY MARY ANN
THE SERIO-COMIC GOVERNESS
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They both styled themselves "Madame," but only the younger of the oldladies had been married. Madame Valière was still a demoiselle, butas she drew towards sixty it had seemed more convenable to possessa mature label. Certainly Madame Dépine had no visible matrimonialadvantages over her fellow-lodger at the Hôtel des Tourterelles,though in the symmetrical cemetery of Montparnasse (Section 22)wreaths of glass beads testified to a copious domesticity in the farpast, and a newspaper picture of a chasseur d'Afrique pinned overher bed recalled—though only the uniform was the dead soldier's—theson she had contributed to France's colonial empire. Practically itwas two old maids—or two lone widows—whose boots turned pointed toestowards each other in the dark cranny of the rambling, fusty corridorof the sky-floor. Madame Dépine was round, and grew dumpier with age;"Madame" Valière was long, and grew slimmer. Otherwise their lives ranparallel. For the true madame of the establishment you had to turn toMadame la Propriétaire, with her buxom bookkeeper of a daughter andher tame baggage-bearing husband. This full-blooded, jovial creature,with her swart moustache, represented the only Parisian success ofthree provincial lives, and, in her good-nature, had permitted herdecayed townswomen—at as