on her stick,
until suddenly she clutched the farmer's arm and pointed the stick
straight at Monsieur Talleyrand, gabbling out something which I couldn't
understand.

The farmer had just been going to hustle her inside the house, but he
changed his mind. "She says _you_ set fire to the automobile," he
exclaimed; "she saw it from the window. She thinks you will murder us
all. Monsieur, my mother has still her senses. She does not tell foolish
lies. You must go out of my house."

"Monstrous!" cried Monsieur Talleyrand. "Am I to be accused on the word
of a crazy old witch? I advise you to be careful what you say."

"Here is something else, which speaks for itself," Brown said. "Look!"
and he pointed to the ground not far from the gnawed bones of my car. We
looked, and saw some wisps of the stuff he had called cotton-waste,
twisted up and saturated with oil. "That was used to fire the petrol,"
he went on. "There was none like it on our car, but you carried plenty
in yours. I've seen you use it, and so, I think, has Miss Randolph."

For an instant Talleyrand seemed to be taken aback, and he looked so
pale in the dim light that I was almost going to be sorry for him, when
with a sudden inspiration he struck an attitude before me. He had the
air of ignoring the others, forgetting that they existed.

"Mademoiselle," he said in a low, really beautiful voice, that might
have drawn tears from an audience if he had been the leading man cruelly
mistaken for a neighbouring villain, "_chere mademoiselle_, I did what
these _canaille_ accuse me of. Yes, I did it! But they cannot understand
why. Only you are high enough to understand. It was--because of my great
love for you. All is to be forgiven to such love. Cheerfully, a hundred
times over, will I pay for this material damage I have done. I am not
poor, except in lacking your love. To gain an opportunity of winning it,
to take you from your brutal _chauffeur_, who is not fit to have
delicate ladies trusted to his care, I did what I have done, meaning to
lay my car, myself, all that I have and am, figuratively at your feet."

If he had really, instead of "figuratively," I'm sure I couldn't have
resisted kicking him, which would have been unladylike. How _could_ I
ever have thought he was nice? Ugh! I could have strangled him with his
own eyelashes! Brown was right about him, after all. I wonder why it
doesn't please one more to find out that other people are right?

"I don't wa