t after she went to Paris--of course, she's very
busy and has crowds of friends; and I've only crossed once or twice
since, on hurried visits; so we haven't met, or written to each other."

("Very good reason," I thought bitterly, behind my sofa. "You've been
busy, too--falling in love with Diana Forrest.")

"It hasn't been announced yet, but I thought as an old friend you might
have been told. I believe Mademoiselle wants to surprise everybody when
the right time comes--if the poor girl isn't ruined irretrievably in
this affair of ours."

"Is there really serious danger of that?" "The most serious. If you
can't save her, not only will the _Entente Cordiale_ be shaken to its
foundations (and I say nothing of my own reputation, which is at stake),
but her future happiness will be broken in the crash, and--she says--she
will not live to suffer the agony of her loss. She will kill herself if
disaster comes; and though suicide is usually the last resource of a
coward, Mademoiselle de Renzie is no coward, and I'm inclined to think I
should come to the same resolve in her place."

"Tell me what I am to do," said Ivor, evidently moved by the Foreign
Secretary's strange words, and his intense earnestness.

"You will go to Paris by the first train to-morrow morning, without
mentioning your intention to anyone; you will drive at once to some
hotel where you have never stayed and are not known. I will find means
of informing the lady what hotel you choose. You will there give a
fictitious name (let us say, George Sandford) and you will take a suite,
with a private sitting-room. That done, you will say that you are
expecting a lady to call upon you, and will see no one else. You will
wait till Mademoiselle de Renzie appears, which will certainly be as
soon as she can possibly manage; and when you and she are alone
together, sure that you're not being spied upon, you will put into her
hands a small packet which I shall give you before we part to-night."

"It sounds simple enough," said Ivor, "if that's all."

"It is all. Yet it may be anything but simple."

"Would you prefer to have me call at her house, and save her coming to a
hotel? I'd willingly do so if--"

"No. As I told you, should it be known that you and she meet, those who
are watching her at present ought not to suspect the real motive of the
meeting. So much the better for us: but we must think of her. After four
o'clock every afternoon, the young Frenchman she'