s value to our
government. Their importance increased her alarm, and the count's
visit added to her sense of need to conceal somewhere the proofs of
her guilt. After her first fatal delay of the next morning, she was
afraid to carry the papers to the legation. She could trust no one.
She believed the Emperor's minister would act at once. She knew that,
soon or late, her town house would be searched. To keep the papers
about her would not do. She must hide them at once, and then we must
hear of them; and no letters would serve her purpose. She was
panic-stricken. I fancy the count, having been careless, was as
anxious, but told no one that day. This gave her a chance until luck
played her a trick. The count's interview in the morning, while it
frightened her, had not helped him. The next day his superiors would
have to be told, and I have no doubt have been.

"Then, as you know, it came his turn to have a bit of good fortune.
Walking in haste to escape a ducking, he must have turned into the Rue
du Roi de Rome to get a cab, and was just in time to see her enter
your carriage. Very likely he did not see you at all. Indeed, we may
be sure that he did not. When, too, the count saw that, in place of
turning homeward, she was being driven toward the Bois, his suspicions
were at once aroused. I ought to say that, to avoid using her own
carriage, she had set out to walk. She was not yet watched, though she
may have thought she was, and her plan was a good one. Curious and
troubled, he caught a cabriolet and followed, as was natural enough.

"The direction of your flight through the Bois confirmed his
suspicions. He may have guessed, and he was right, that she was about
to go to her well-known little country house and meant to hide the
papers. I am trying to follow what must have been his course of
thought and would have been mine. He would catch her and get them,
even at the cost of arresting her. So far this is in part her account
and in part my inferences. As we talked thus at length, she was again
indescribably uneasy and took every one who passed for a spy."

"Well," said I, "I do not wonder. The court is cool to us. Something
hostile to our country is going on between France and England. The
English abuse is exhausting their adjectives. If they propose
intervention in any shape, Mr. Adams has instructions of which every
American should be proud."

"Good!" cried Merton. "We have not put forth our power, and people
over