l has written him compromising letters," she
lamented.

"They must be got back."

"But how? Oh, Monsieur Pujol, do you think he would take money for
them?"

"A scoundrel like that would take money for his dead mother's shroud,"
said Aristide.

"A thousand pounds?"

She looked very haggard and helpless beneath the blue arc-lights.
Aristide's heart went out to her. He knew her type--the sweet
gentlewoman of rural England who comes abroad to give her pretty
daughter a sight of life, ingenuously confident that foreign
watering-places are as innocent as her own sequestered village.

"That is much money, _chere madame_," said Aristide.

"I am fairly well off," said Mrs. Errington.

Aristide reflected. At the offer of a smaller sum the Count would
possibly bluff. But to a Knight of Industry, as he knew the Count to be,
a certain thousand pounds would be a great temptation. And after all to
a wealthy Englishwoman what was a thousand pounds?

"Madame," said he, "if you offer him a thousand pounds for the letters,
and a written confession that he is not the Comte de Lussigny, but a
common adventurer, I stake my reputation that he will accept."

They walked along for a few moments in silence; the opera had begun at
the adjoining Villa des Fleurs and the strains floated through the still
August air. After a while she halted and laid her hand on his sleeve.

"Monsieur Pujol, I have never been faced with such a thing, before. Will
you undertake for me this delicate and difficult business?"

"Madame," said he, "my life is at the service of yourself and your most
exquisite daughter." She pressed his hand. "Thank God, I've got a friend
in this dreadful place," she said brokenly. "Let me go in." And when
they reached the lounge, she said, "Wait for me here."

She entered the lift. Aristide waited. Presently the lift descended and
she emerged with a slip of paper in her hand.

"Here is a bearer cheque, Monsieur Pujol, for a thousand pounds. Get the
letters and the confession if you can, and a mother's blessing will go
with you."

She left him and went upstairs again in the lift. Aristide athirst with
love, living drama and unholy hatred of the Comte de Lussigny, cocked
his black, soft-felt evening hat at an engaging angle on his head and
swaggered into the Villa des Fleurs. As he passed the plebeian crowd
round the petits-chevaux table--these were the days of little horses and
not the modern equivalent of _la boule_--he