y, stay here till all the formalities are over and you can find
rooms elsewhere," said Mme. Trouessart, the owner-servant of the
tea-shop. "I have another spare room. For the moment my locataires
are gone. I know you both very well by sight, you were clients of
ours in the happy days before the War. Madame votre mere was, I
think, the gerante of the Hotel Edouard-Sept when I first came to
manage here. Since then, you have often drunk my tea. Je me nomme
'Trouessart' c'est le nom de mon mari qui est ... qui est--Vous
pouvez diviner ou il est, ou est a present tout Belge loyal qui peut
servir. Le nom Walcker? C'etait le nom de nom pere, et de plus est,
c'etait un nom Anglais transforme un peu en Flamand. Mon
arriere-grand-pere etait soldat Anglais. Il se battait a Waterloo.
For me, I spik no English--or ver' leetle."

She went on to explain, whilst the doctors occupied themselves with
their gruesome task, and Vivie was being persuaded to take some
nourishment, that her great grandfather had been a soldier servant
who had married a Belgian woman and settled down on the site of this
very shop a hundred years ago. He and his wife had even then
made a specialty of tea for English tourists. She, his great
grand-daughter, had after her marriage to Monsieur Trouessart
carried on the business under the old name--Walker, made to look
Flemish as Walcker.

Vivie when left alone suddenly thought of the money question. She
remembered then that before going out to look for rooms she had
transferred half the notes from their hiding-place to an inner
pocket. They were still there. But what about her luggage and her
mother's, and the remainder of the money? In her distress she wrote
to Graefin von Stachelberg. Minna came over from her hospital at half
past six in the evening. By that time the doctor had given the
necessary certificate of the cause of death, and an undertaker had
come on the scene to make his preparations.

Minna went over to the Hotel Imperial with Vivie. Appearing in her
Red Cross uniform, she was admitted, announced herself as the Graefin
von Stachelberg, and demanded to know what justification the manager
could offer for his extraordinary brutality towards these English
ladies, the result of which had been the death of the elder lady.
The manager replied that inasmuch as the All Highest himself was to
arrive that very evening to take up his abode at the Hotel Imperial,
the hotel premises had been requisitioned, etc