demoiselle du
bureau_, their charges of the lowest." He was a most noble patron.

The path of the wicked was thus made smooth. By the English guests, by
the entire staff, it was considered inevitable, indeed highly
becoming, that Madame and Rust should devote themselves wholly to one
another. Had they embraced in public, and wept many times a day upon
one another's necks, the staff--half of which was French--would have
deemed the exhibition most seemly and fitting, and the English, though
embarrassed, would not have been censorious. By so much has war
brought to us an understanding of the simple honest hearts of our
closest Allies. In ceasing to be insular we are ceasing to worship our
wooden conventional gods.

Madame, who, as I have before remarked, says the most frightful things
in her soft, musical voice, regarding one the while with frank, steady
eyes, commented thus upon the attitude of _le patron_ and his
assistants towards them. "They wrapped us about so thoroughly in their
tender sympathy that nothing which we had chosen to do in mutual
consolation could have shocked them."

I do not propose to weary the reader by detailing at length the
progress of Madame's Saturday campaign. Her methods of offence will,
by now, have become clear. To the "suffocating gas" of her smiles, and
the "liquid fire" of her eyes she had added the devastating
"Tank"--her despatch-case. She worked its mysteries unceasingly. When
it was not under her own hand it reposed--during meal times, for
example--in the steel safe of _le patron_. All except one paper, of
the most thrilling importance, which never left her person. This
small, unobtrusive paper, upon which, according to Madame, the
destinies of nations depended, was hidden always--happy paper--in the
bosom of her corset.

Did she not, inquired Rust, greatly daring, find it rather hard and
scratchy? To him its resting-place seemed too delicate a spot to be
used as a general store. Madame frowned at the allusion to so intimate
a topic, and Rust, terrified, implored her pardon, which was
graciously vouchsafed.

"You should not, _mon ami_, speak to me as if I were that which you
once thought me--a light woman." She reduced him nearly to tears, and
then, in kindly consolation, permitted him to hold her hand. Both as a
pretended French officer, and as an English agent of the Secret
Service, Rust was the most derisory of frauds.

During the day the pair of plotters were inseparable,