ng discomfiture!

But time was moving apace. We must settle on something in short order. I
spoke in the most matter-of-fact tones that I could summon, not, heaven
knows, out of a feeling of levity concerning what had happened, but to
try to lighten the grim business a degree or so and keep us sane.

"I think, Miss Falconer," I began, standing before her, "that we
have got to thrash this matter out at last. You think I've behaved
unspeakably, trailing you everywhere, and I don't deny I have, according
to your point of view. But the fact is, I didn't follow you to annoy
you; I'm a half-way decent fellow. You have simply got to trust me until
I've seen you through this tangle. After that, if you like you need
never look at me again."

Her troubled eyes rested on me, half bewildered.

"Why, I'd forgotten all that," she murmured. "I do trust you, Mr. Bayne.
Of course I must have misunderstood you to some way last evening, and
I'm afraid I was disagreeable."

"Naturally. You had to be. Now, if that's all right and I'm forgiven,
may I ask a question? About those men who arrived last night and
apparently killed your chauffeur--can you guess who they are?"

"Yes," she faltered, looking down at the pebbled walk. "They must have
been sent by the Government or the army or the police. If the French
knew what I was doing, they wouldn't understand my motives. I've been
afraid from the first that they would learn."

Another of my precious theories was going up in smoke. Not seeing why a
set of bonafide officers should gratuitously murder a chauffeur, I had
been wondering whether the quartet might not be impostors, tricked out
in uniforms to which they had no claim. Still, of course, I couldn't
judge. If she would only confide in me! I was fairly aching to help her;
yet how could I, in this blindfold way?

"I don't wish to be impertinent," I ventured at length, meekly, "and I
give you my word I'm not trying to find out anything you don't want
me to. Only, assuming I've got some sense,--in case you care to be so
amiable,--I'd like to put it at your service. Do you think you could
give me just a vague outline of your plans?"

She looked at me in a piteous, uncertain manner. I braced myself for
a "No." Then, suddenly, she seemed to decide to trust me--in sheer
desperate loneliness, I dare say.

"I am going," she whispered, "to a village in the war zone--where there
is a chateau. There are things in it--some papers; at least I be