head solicitously, as though ready to obey her
smallest wish. Again I started to turn away.

"The door, Brutus," said my father.

"I am beginning to see I made a mistake in not remaining," Mademoiselle
said finally. "Yet you--"

"Contrived to rescue both the papers and Mademoiselle, if I remember
rightly," said my father, bowing, "an interesting and original
undertaking, but pray do not thank me."

"Be still!" she commanded sharply. "You were not paid to be impertinent,
captain. I have only one more request to make of you before I leave this
house tomorrow morning."

He shrugged his shoulders, and glanced at me, as though definitely to
assure himself that I was listening.

"I do not think that Mademoiselle will leave the house at that date," he
said, with a second bow.

"And what does the captain mean by that?" she asked quickly.

"Simply that the house is already watched," said my father, "watched,
Mademoiselle, by persons in the pay of the French government. Do not
start, Mademoiselle, they will not trouble us tonight, I think."

For the first time her surprising self-confidence left her. She turned
pale, even to her red lips, stretched out a hand blindly, and grasped
the table.

"And the paper?" she whispered. "You have destroyed it?"

My father shook his head.

"Then," gasped Mademoiselle, "give it to me now! At once, captain, if
you please!"

"Mademoiselle no longer trusts me?" asked my father, in tones of pained
surprise. "Surely not that!"

"Exactly that!" she flung back at him angrily.

He bowed smilingly in acknowledgment.

"And Mademoiselle is right," he agreed. "I have read the paper. I have
been tempted."

"You rogue!" she cried. "You mean--"

"I mean," he interrupted calmly, "that I have been tempted and have
fallen. The document I carry has too much value, Mademoiselle. The actual
signatures of the gentlemen who had been so deluded as to believe they
could restore a king to France! Figure for yourself, my lady, those names
properly used are a veritable gold mine, more profitable than my Chinese
trade can hope to be! Surely you realize that?"

"So you have turned from cards to diplomacy," I observed. "How versatile
you grow, father!"

"They are much the same thing," my father said.

"And you mean," Mademoiselle cried, "you are dog enough to use those
names? You mean you are going back on your word either to destroy that
list or to place it in proper hands? You mean you are willi