ry old badger at the bottom of it. Talks vile stuff.
However, 'perhaps I didn't drive out on that sweltering Carlsruhe road
for nothing.'

He screwed a look at the earl, who sent Abrane to carry a message and
heard the story Potts had to tell.

'Henrietta Fakenham! no mistake about her; driving out from a pothouse;
man beside her, military man; might be a German. And, if you please,
quite unacquainted with your humble servant, though we were as close as
you to me. Something went wrong in that pothouse. Red eyes. There had
been a scene, one could swear. Behind the lady another carriage, and her
maid. Never saw the girl before, and sets to bowing and smirking at me,
as if I was the-fellow of all others! Comical. I made sure they were
bound for this place. They were on the Strasburg road. No sign of them?'

'You speak to me?' said Fleetwood.

Potts muttered. He had put his foot into it.

'You have a bad habit of speaking to yourself,' Fleetwood remarked, and
left him. He suffered from the rustics he had to deal with among his
class, and it was not needed that he should thunder at them to make his
wrath felt.

Livia swam in, asking: 'What has come to Russett? He passed me in one of
his black fits.'

The tale of the Carlsruhe road was repeated by Potts. She reproved him.
'How could you choose Russett for such a report as that! The admiral was
on the road behind. Henrietta--you're sure it was she? German girls have
much the same colouring. The gentleman with her must have been one of the
Court equerries. They were driving to some chateau or battlefield the
admiral wanted to inspect. Good-looking man? Military man?'

'Oh! the man! pretty fair, I dare say,' Potts rejoined. 'If it wasn't
Henrietta Fakenham, I see with the back of my head. German girl! The maid
was a German girl.'

'That may well be,' said Livia.

She conceived the news to be of sufficient importance for her to
countermand the drive up the Lichtenthal, and take the Carlsruhe road
instead; for Henrietta was weak, and Chillon Kirby an arch-plotter, and
pleader too, one of the desperate lovers. He was outstaying his leave of
absence already, she believed; he had to be in England. If he feared to
lose Henrietta, he would not hesitate to carry her off. Livia knew him,
and knew the power of his pleading with a firmer woman than Henrietta.

CHAPTER XI

THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD

Nothing to rouse alarm was discovered at Carlsruhe. Livia's fair cousin