before her. "You know me, then? How can you? But I forget!
You are English; you are that great and mysterious man Cleek; and
he--ah, he must surely know everything!"

"I know you, at least," he replied, shaking with mingled embarrassment
and delight at the knowledge that at last he was permitted to speak to
her, to have her speak to him. "I have seen you often in London; and to
find you here, like this? It fairly takes away my breath."

"The explanation is very simple, Mr. Cleek. I suppose you know that my
uncle, Sir Horace Wyvern, married again last spring? The new Lady Wyvern
soon let me know that I was a superfluous person in the household. I
left it, of course. Sir Horace would have pensioned me off if I had let
him. I couldn't bring myself to eat the bread of charity, however, and
when a former schoolmate offered me a post as her companion, I
gratefully accepted it. So for the past three months I have been living
here in Paris with Athalie and her father, the Baron de Carjorac."

"Baron de Carjorac? Do you mean the French Minister of the Interior, the
President of the Board of National Defences, Miss Lorne, that
enthusiastic old patriot, that rabid old spitfire whose one dream is the
wresting back of Alsace-Lorraine, the driving of the hated Germans into
the sea? Do you mean that ripping old firebrand?"

"Yes. But you'd not call him that if you could see the wreck, the broken
and despairing wreck, that six weeks of the Chateau Larouge, six weeks
of that horrible 'Red Crawl' have made of him."

"'The Red Crawl'? Good heavens! then that letter, that appeal for
help----"

"Came from him!" she finished excitedly. "It was he who was to have met
you here to-night, Mr. Cleek. This house is one he owns; he thought he
might with safety risk coming here, but--he can't! he can't! He knows
now that there is danger for him everywhere; that his every step is
tracked; that the snare which is about him has been about him,
unsuspected, for almost a year; that he dare not, absolutely dare not,
appeal to the French police, and that if it were known he had appealed
to you, he would be a dead man inside of twenty-four hours, and not only
dead, but--disgraced. Oh, Mr. Cleek," she stretched out two shaking
hands and laid them on his arm, lifted a white, imploring face to his,
"save him! save that dear broken old man! Ah, think! think! They are our
friends, our dear country's friends, these French people. Their welfare
is our welfa