worth living, then, without an appetite?" inquired
Lorraine, mischievously.

"No," said Grahame, seriously; "and you also will be of that
opinion some day, mademoiselle."

His kindly, humourous eyes turned inquiringly from Jack to
Lorraine and from Lorraine to Jack. He was puzzled, perhaps, but
did not betray it.

They were not married, because Lorraine was Mademoiselle de
Nesville and Jack was Monsieur Marche. Cousins? Probably.
Engaged? Probably. So Grahame smiled benignly and emptied another
bottle of Moselle with a frank abandon that fascinated the old
house-keeper.

"And you don't mean to say that you are going to put me up for
the night, too?" he asked Jack. "You place me under eternal
obligation, and I accept with that understanding. If you run into
my Hohenzollerns, they'll receive you as a brother."

"I don't think he will visit the Hohenzollern Regiment," observed
Lorraine, demurely.

"No--er--the fact is, I'm not doing much newspaper work now,"
said Jack.

Grahame was puzzled but bland.

"Tell us, Monsieur Grahame, of what you saw in the Spicheren,"
said Lorraine. "Is it a very bad defeat? I am sure it cannot be.
Of course, France will win, sooner or later; nobody doubts that."

Before Grahame could manufacture a suitable reply--and his wit
was as quick as his courtesy--a door opened and Madame de Morteyn
entered, sad-eyed but smiling.

Jack jumped up and asked leave to present Mr. Grahame, and the
old lady received him very sweetly, insisting that he should
make the Chateau his home as long as he stayed in the vicinity.

A few moments later she went away with Lorraine and her maid, and
Jack and Archibald Grahame were left together to sip their
Moselle and smoke some very excellent cigars that Jack found in
the library.

"Mr. Grahame," said Jack, diffidently, "if it would not be an
impertinent question, who is going to run away in this campaign?"

Grahame's face fell; his sombre glance swept the beautiful room
and rested on a picture--the "Battle of Waterloo."

"It will be worse than that," he said, abruptly. "May I take one
of these cigars? Oh, thank you."

Jack's heart sank, but he smiled and passed a lighted cigar-lamp
to the other.

"My judgment has been otherwise," he said, "and what you say
troubles me."

"It troubles me, too," said Grahame, looking out of the dark
window at the watery clouds, ragged, uncanny, whirling one by one
like tattered witches across the disk of a missh