AT dinner at the Hôtel Krone, Schaffhausen, that same evening, Grafton told his wife and Burroughs the story of the Spaniard—how it had led him to her. She secretly resolved that the Spaniard must and should be theirs. In the morning she wrote her uncle an offer to give up the part of her estates that lay in the Grand Duchy in exchange for the picture. The acceptance came, prompt and polite; Casimir is not the man to bite his nails and chatter his teeth at fate. And so there was a surprise for Grafton when they went to Paris.
And this is the true story of how it happens that the spurious Velasquez again hangs in the Grafton house in Michigan Avenue. But it is not in its old place in the galleries. It is on the wall beyond the foot of Mrs. Grafton’s bed.
THE END