the risk of my happening to look inside the outer case, and
finding you had abstracted the blessed box: in which case I might quite
naturally have concluded you meant to steal it.'

'I thought of that,' I answered. 'But I decided to risk it. I felt it
was worth while. For I was sure the man meant to take the case as soon
as ever you gave him the opportunity.'

'Then you deserve to be rewarded,' she insisted, pressing the cheque
upon me.

[Illustration: I PUT HER HAND BACK FIRMLY.]

I put her hand back firmly. 'Lady Georgina,' I said, 'it is very amiable
of you. I think you do right in offering me the money; but I think I
should do altogether wrong in accepting it. A lady is not honest from
the hope of gain; she is not brave because she expects to be paid for
her bravery. You were my employer, and I was bound to serve my
employer's interests. I did so as well as I could, and there is the end
of it.'

She looked absolutely disappointed; we all hate to crush a benevolent
impulse; but she tore the cheque up into very small pieces. 'As you
will, my dear,' she said, with her hands on her hips: 'I see, you are
poor Tom Cayley's daughter. He was always a bit Quixotic.' Though I
believe she liked me all the better for my refusal.

On the way from Cologne to Eltville, however, and on the drive up to
Schlangenbad, I found her just as fussy and as worrying as ever. 'Let me
see, how many of these horrid pfennigs make an English penny? I never
_can_ remember. Oh, those silly little nickel things are ten pfennigs
each, are they? Well, eight would be a penny, I suppose. A mark's a
shilling; ridiculous of them to divide it into ten pence instead of
twelve; one never really knows how much one's paying for anything. Why
these Continental people can't be content to use pounds, shillings, and
pence, all over alike, the same as we do, passes _my_ comprehension.
They're glad enough to get English sovereigns when they can; why, then,
don't they use them as such, instead of reckoning them each at
twenty-five francs, and then trying to cheat you out of the proper
exchange, which is _always_ ten centimes more than the brokers give you?
What, _we_ use their beastly decimal system? Lois, I'm ashamed of you.
An English girl to turn and rend her native country like that! Francs
and centimes, indeed! Fancy proposing it at Peter Robinson's! No, I
will _not_ go by the boat, my dear. I hate the Rhine boats, crowded with
nasty selfish pigs of Germ