e she asked me how far it still was to Itzia. I told
her as nearly as I could guess; she thanked me, and then leaned back in
her carriage, waiting until the horses should have rested. In due
time she drove on, with a little inclination of the head so regal and
condescending that she might have been a princess at the least. When she
was two or three hundred yards away I arose and followed. The carriage
went out of sight in a little while, and I thought no more about it or
its occupant until I saw the vehicle itself standing empty at the door
of the inn.

The lady was seated in her rich dress in the common room, and she and
Brunow were talking like old friends. Brunow's anger was no more lasting
than a child's, and by this time he had quite recovered his good-humor.

"Oh, here you are, old fellow," he cried, genially. "Baroness, permit me
to introduce to you Captain Fyffe. Fyffe, this is the Baroness Bonnar."

CHAPTER IV

When I saw the lady face to face I perceived that she was older than
I had fancied her to be, and I saw that she adopted certain devices to
hide the ravages of time which had, as they always have, the effect of
emphasizing them. I wonder if women will ever learn the perfect folly
and uselessness of that sort of trickery.

The Baroness Bonnar was very gracious in her manners, but she seemed to
me much less like a real great lady than like an actress who played at
being a great lady. I am not very penetrating in that respect, and, as
I have said already, I knew next to nothing of women and their ways, and
so I was not disposed to trust my own judgment, but put it on one side
with a certain contempt and impatience of myself. As a matter of fact,
as I found out not so long afterwards, the Baroness Bonnar was no more
a baroness than I was a baron, but simply and merely an adventuress who
had spent some time on the Vienna stage, where she had secured no great
success. She was now one of that almost innumerable band of spies who
lived at that time in the service of the Austrian government. She was
not a very clever woman, I am inclined to think, but she had been
clever enough to induce a high official to fall in love with her, and
by keeping this high official hanging off and on she had contrived to
obtain promotion in her abominable calling far beyond her intellectual
deserts. Brunow, it seemed, had known her for a year or two, but I
learned afterwards that he had made no guess as to her real busines