r you to know, whatever the result
may be. Of that I have no doubt whatever."

He laughed reassuringly, which made her glance at him gravely, almost
anxiously.

"And are you going on telling it to other people, afterward," she
inquired; "to my father, for instance?"

"No, Mademoiselle. It comes to you, and it stops at you. I do not mind
withholding it from your father, and from all the friends who have been
so kind to me in France. I do not mind deceiving kings and emperors,
Mademoiselle, and even the People, which is now always spelt in capital
letters, and must be spoken of with bated breath."

She gave a scornful little laugh, as at the sound of an old jest--the
note of a deathless disdain which was in the air she breathed.

"Not even the newspapers, which are trying to govern France. All that is
a question of politics. But when it comes to you, Mademoiselle, that is
a different matter."

"Ah!"

"Yes. It is then a question of love."

Juliette slowly changed colour, but she gave a little gay laugh of
incredulity and bent her head away from the light of the lamp.

"That is a different code of honour altogether," he said, gravely. "A
code one does not wish to tamper with."

"No?" she inquired, with the odd little smile of foreknowledge again.

"No. And, therefore, before I go any farther, I think it best to tell
you that I am not what I am pretending to be. I am pretending to be
the son of the little Dauphin, who escaped from the Temple. He may have
escaped from the Temple; that I don't know. But I know, or at least I
think I know, that he is not buried in Farlingford churchyard and he was
not my father. I can pass as the grandson of Louis XVI.; I know that.
I can deceive all the world. I can even climb to the throne of France,
perhaps. There are many, as you know, who think I shall do it without
difficulty. But I do not propose to deceive YOU, Mademoiselle."

There was a short silence, while Loo watched her face. Juliette had not
even changed colour. When she was satisfied that he had nothing more to
add, she looked at him, her needle poised in the air.

"Do you think it matters?" she asked, in a little cool, even voice.

It was so different from what he had expected that, for a moment, he
was taken aback. Captain Clubbe's bluff, uncompromising reception of the
same news had haunted his thoughts. "The square thing," that sailor had
said, "and damn your friends; damn France." Loo looked at Juliette in
d