oftened suddenly.

M. Blivinski, who happened to be sitting beside her, caught the exchange
of looks, and for a moment was puzzled. Selpdorf's daughter? Well, well,
the English are a wonderful people, he said to himself. Neither subtle
nor gifted, but lucky. Lucky enough to give the devil odds and beat him!
Here was Selpdorf laying his plans deeply and with consummate skill,
while this pretty clever daughter of his was ready to give him away
because a heavy dragoon of the favoured race smiled at her across a
breakfast table. Pah! The ways of Providence are inscrutable; it remains
for mortal men to do what they may to turn them into more convenient
channels.

Then there was Counsellor, whose political importance could not be
denied. Yet he did the bluff thing bluffly and said the obvious thing
obviously, and blundered on from one great city to another, but
blundered triumphantly! Still there were compensations. The good God
had given the Russian craft and a silent tongue, and a facility for
telling a lie seasonably.

Elmur was by a fraction of a second too late to see what the Russian had
seen. Valerie was very white, but she was talking indifferently to M.
Blivinski with her eyes fixed upon her plate. It was some time before
she seemed to grow conscious of Elmur's gaze; a slight fleck of colour
showed and paled in her cheeks, and then at length her long lashes
fluttered up and the German perceived in the darkness of her eyes a
trace of unshed tears.

'Mademoiselle, you are tired,' he said with solicitude.

'Yes,' she answered smiling. 'But we are going back to Revonde in a day
or two, and then I will wipe out the remembrance of everything that has
happened at Sagan from my mind forever!'

Elmur was about to reply when Sagan spoke again.

'No one appears to have heard or seen anything of Captain Colendorp. We
will have the dogs out, Captain Rallywood. Pray tell his Highness that
in the course of an hour or two we hope to be able to tell him where our
man has got to. His absence is doubtless due to some trifling cause.'

As Rallywood retired Sagan cast a comprehensive glance around the
tables, and noted Counsellor's absence with a sinister satisfaction.

All the morning he had been speculating upon the course Counsellor
would pursue after the rencontre of the previous night. Most likely
disappear from the Castle. He would not dare to brazen it out. Sagan
argued that the British envoy could not be very sure of hi