corridor she met Madame de Brie who had been hunting for her.

"Cleo, they are waiting dejeuner for you--but, my dear child, you have
not changed, has no one shewn you to your room?"

The old lady had not only brought along Cleo's maid who, with the rest
of the servants, had been on board wages during her mistress's absence,
but a trunk full of clothes.

"I am not going to change," said Cleo, "I am too busy--and too hungry--"

A reporter from the _Gaulois_ stopped her as she was turning towards the
room, indicated by Madame de Brie, where dejeuner was to be served.

"Mademoiselle," said the reporter, "I did not like to trouble you
sooner, may I crave the honour of a short interview with you on account
of the _Gaulois_?"

"Certainly, monsieur," replied the girl. "Pray come to dejeuner as my
guest, I hope to tell my friends something of my experiences and what I
say you can repeat; that will be better than a formal interview
tete-a-tete, which, after all, is rather a depressing affair."

The dejeuner was not a depressing affair. Cleo struck the note. She was
in radiant good humour. Madame de Brie sat on her right, Monsieur de
Brie on her left. Monsieur Bonvalot, her man of affairs, with his long
Dundreary whiskers, opposite to her; the rest were scattered on either
side of the long table.

At first the conversation was general, then, after a while, Cleo was
talking and the rest listening.

"As I shall be very busy for a long time," said Cleo, "I would like now
to give all the information I can about the loss of the yacht. A
gentleman is present on behalf of the _Gaulois_, and as all details I
can give relative to the disaster are of world wide interest,
considering the position of the late Prince Selm, I take this
opportunity of making them known. Unfortunately they are few."

She told briefly but clearly the story of the disaster, of her escape
and landing on Kerguelen, of the caves and the cache and the death of
the two men. She did not tell how La Touche met his end, that business
had to do with no one but herself and La Touche. She gave it to be
understood that he, like Bompard, had met his fate in the quicksands.

She told of her loneliness, and how she had been dying simply from
loneliness, how she had been saved by Raft and how he had nursed her
like a mother.

It was then that she really began to talk and shew them pictures. They
saw the beach and that terrible journey along under the cliffs, cliffs