sigh of relief. I lit a cigarette, and
suddenly I felt a cold little hand steal into mine. I set my teeth and
held it firmly.

"Arnold," she whispered, and her voice was none too steady, "I hate that
woman. I do not care if she is my aunt; and--Arnold----"

"Yes."

"I believe that she hates me too. She looks at me as though I were
something unpleasant, as though she wished me dead. I will not go to
her, Arnold. Say that I shall not."

For a moment I was silent. Her little womanish airs of the last few
months, the quaint effort of dignity with which it seemed to have
pleased her to add all that was possible to her years, had wholly
departed. She was a child again, with frightened eyes and quivering
lips, the child who had walked so easily into our hearts in those first
days of her terror. To think of her as such again was almost a relief.

"Dear Isobel," I said, "the Archduchess has told me now two different
stories concerning you. She appears to be very anxious to have you in
her care, but her methods up to the present have been very strange. We
shall not give you up to her unless we are obliged. But----"

"Please what, Arnold?" she interrupted anxiously.

"If the Archduchess is indeed your aunt, as she says she is, you must
have hundreds of other relations, many of whom you would without doubt
find very different people. Besides, in that case, you see, Isobel, you
ought to be living altogether differently. It is absurd for you to be
grubbing along with us in an attic when you ought to be living in a
palace, with plenty of money and servants and beautiful frocks, and all
that sort of thing. You understand me, don't you?" I concluded a little
lamely, for the steady gaze of those deep blue frightened eyes was a
little disconcerting.

"No, I do not," she answered. "If I am a Waldenburg and the niece of the
Archduchess, why was I left alone at that convent for all those years,
and who was responsible for sending that man to fetch me away--that
terrible man? How are they going to explain that, these wonderful
relations of mine? Oh, Arnold, Arnold!" she cried, suddenly swaying over
towards me in the cab, "I don't want to leave you--all. Do not send me
away. Promise that you will not!"

A child, I told myself fiercely, a mere child this! Nevertheless I was
thankful for the darkness of the silent street into which we had turned,
the darkness which hid my face from her. Her soft breath was upon my
cheek, her beautifu