o, then," she replied. "I'm so glad you've forgiven me. My action
was, I know, horribly mean and quite unpardonable. Good evening."

"Good evening, nurse," Darnborough responded, as he busied himself
repacking his papers. She left the room.

The great man of secrets was, as yet, in ignorance that the pretty,
graceful, half-French nurse and Fraeulein Montague, Dick Harborne's
friend, were one and the same person.

At that moment he had been talking with the very woman whom his agents
had been hunting the whole of Europe to find. Yet he bowed her out of
the room in entire ignorance of that fact.

And as she ascended the great, broad, thickly-carpeted staircase to the
sick man's room she was filled with regret that Darnborough had not
entered five minutes later, when, by that time, she would have learnt
the secret of what was contained in those papers concerning Dick
Harborne's death.

Her head swam as she recalled that tragic afternoon and also the
afternoon succeeding it, when she had witnessed the terrible accident to
Noel Barclay, the naval aviator. She recollected how Ralph had been at
her side in the cab when they had both witnessed the collapse of the
aeroplane, and how utterly callous and unmoved he had been.

For the thousandth time she asked herself whether Ralph Ansell, her dead
husband, had ever discovered her friendship with Richard Harborne. It
was a purely platonic friendship. Their stations in life had been
totally different, yet he had always treated her gallantly, and she had,
in return, consented to assist him in several matters--"matters of
business" he had termed them. And in connection with one of them she had
gone to Germany as Fraeulein Montague and met him on that memorable day
when she acted as a go-between.

Had Ralph found this out? If so, had Dick died by her husband's hand?

She was at the door of his lordship's room, a pretty figure in her blue
cotton gown and white nursing-apron and cap. For a moment she paused to
crush down all recollections of the past. Then she turned the handle and
entered on tip-toe, fearing lest her patient might be asleep.

But he was very wideawake--planning a line of policy to defeat the
suggested Austro-German alliance against Great Britain. Prompt measures
were necessary. At eight o'clock in the morning two King's Messengers
would be at Bracondale ready to take the cipher despatches--autograph
instructions to the British Ambassadors to the Courts of both