t intimate terms of friendship with their hostess.
One of them, however, is declared by the groom to be a man he had met in
the neighbourhood two days before; therefore it would seem as though the
affair had been very carefully planned."

"Most extraordinary!" declared Bindo, while a chorus of surprise and
horror went around the table. "And the boy is missing with the
assassins?"

"Yes; they have apparently taken him away with them. They say that
there's some woman at the bottom of it all--and most probably," sniffed
the old Colonel. "The foreigners who live here in England are mostly a
queer lot, who've broken the laws of their own country and efface their
identity here."

I listened at the open door with breathless interest as the old fellow
discussed the affair with young Lady Casterton, who sat next him, while
around the table various theories were advanced.

"I met the man Latour once--one day in the summer," exclaimed Mr.
Molesworth, a tall, thin-faced man, rector of a neighbouring parish. "He
was introduced to me at the village flower-show at Alconbury, when I was
doing duty there. He struck me as a very pleasant, well-bred man, who
spoke English perfectly."

I stood in the corridor like a man in a dream. Had I actually assisted
the mysterious woman to abduct the child? Every detail of my adventure
on the previous night arose vividly before me. That she had been aware
of the terrible tragedy was apparent, for without doubt she was in
league with the assassins. She had made me promise to deny having seen
her, and I ground my teeth at having been so cleverly tricked by a
pretty woman.

Yet ought I to prejudge her when still ignorant of the truth, which she
had promised to reveal to me? Was it just?

Next day, making excuse that I wished to test the car, I ran over to the
sleepy little village of Buckworth, which lay in a hollow about two
miles from the sign-post where I had been stopped by Clotilde. "The
Cedars" was a large, old-fashioned house, standing away from the village
in its own grounds, and at the village inn, where I called, I learned
from the landlord many additional details of how the three mysterious
visitors had arrived in a station-fly from Huntingdon, how eagerly Mr.
Latour had welcomed them, and how they had disappeared at nightfall,
after accomplishing their object.

"I hear it said that a woman is at the bottom of it all," I remarked.

"Of course we can't say, sir," he replied; "but a