count. "You will find night apparel on
the chair. The good Frau Krause has thought of everything."

This, indeed, seemed to be the fact when Ruth awoke from her sound
sleep at mid-forenoon. She might not have aroused then had there not
been an insistent tapping on the door.

"_Ja_? _Herein_!" exclaimed Ruth, not too sleepy to remember her
German.

A broad face surmounted by a cap, then the woman--quite a motherly
looking person--appeared. "I am to help the Fraulein dress," announced
Frau Krause, smiling.

"If you will be so kind," the girl agreed.

What she had not noticed when she went to bed was an open trunk heaped
with clothing--both for under and outer wear. The rich and "stuffy"
gown was typically German, and so was the plumed hat.

Ruth was sitting, with her hat on, in the little dining-room of the
cottage over her pot of substitute coffee, rye bread and schmierkaese,
when a private and almost noiseless auto-car rolled up to the door.
She went out and entered it quite alone, and they were out of the
Marchand estate by a rear exit and on the highway to Merz before Ruth
discovered that the capped and goggled chauffeur was none other than
Count Allaire Marchand himself.

In a stretch of the road where there was no traffic and few houses in
sight, he half turned in his seat and told Ruth in brisk, illuminating
sentences what she was to do.

It sounded easy, providing she aroused no suspicion in the breasts of
those whom she met. The supposed character of Captain von Brenner's
sister would enable her to treat everybody in a distant and haughty
manner.

"But be careful of your German, Fraulein," urged the count. "Make no
error in your speech. Deny yourself to everybody until your brother
appears. After your first outburst of anger and alarm, when you arrive
at the hotel, retire to the rooms he engaged for you, and refuse to
discuss the matter with anybody.

"It is, as you Americans say, one grand game of bluff. It can be
carried through by no other means. Remember what I have told you to
tell your brother. To-night at nine, or to-morrow night at nine, I
will be in waiting with the car. This is absolutely all my brother and
I can do for you."

In a few minutes the car rolled into the principal street of Merz.
Just beyond the great, glass-roofed building, wherein in happier times
the visitors went daily to drink the medicated waters, was the hotel.

A rheumatic old woman with a sash, who act