give you rheumatism; and girls in Holland are allowed to be very
independent."

My heart sank. How could even the ever resourceful L.C.P. get round that
sharp corner?

She was equal to it. "You are very considerate," she replied, "but I am
old-fashioned and used to _Scotch_ ways; and in Scotland even _elderly_
persons like myself are used also to walking in the rain, otherwise we
should seldom walk at all. Indeed, we rather like rain, in pleasant
company."

With this, she got up briskly, and it was as a trio that we had our wet
walk through the streets of Amsterdam.

The shops were still bright, however, and I stopped my two companions
under their dripping umbrellas, in front of a window blazing with a
display of jewelry.

"Now, what should you say was the most beautiful thing of the lot?" I
asked.

"That ring," promptly answered Menela, pointing to a pigeon-blood
cabuchon ruby, of heart shape, set with clear white diamonds.

It was a ring for a lover to offer to his lady.

[Illustration: _It was a ring for a lover to offer to his lady_]

"You are right," agreed the L.C.P. "There's nothing else in the window
to touch that."

"Let's go in and buy it, then," I said. "I have a friend to whom I
should like to make a little present."

"Little present!" echoed Menela. "It will cost you three thousand gulden
at the least."

"That is not too costly, considering everything," said I, mysteriously.
And I was bubbling with malicious joy, as, by right of purchase, the
ring became mine. "Each one of them considers it as good as hers," I
said to myself. "To-morrow evening, at Rotterdam, if I am safely spared
from Freule Menela, and she is gone out of my life forever, that ring
may change hands; but it won't go to The Hague."

I dreamed all night that I was pursued by Robert's escaped fiancee, and
dodging her, ran into the arms of Sir Alec MacNairne, who denounced me
fiercely as a murderer. Nor was there much relief in awaking; for I knew
that in her room, divided from me only by a friendly wall or two, Freule
Menela lay planning how to trap me.

"If I am to be saved," I said to myself, "I'm afraid it won't be by my
own courage or resource. I must look to my aunt. She fought for me nobly
all day; but there are still twelve hours of danger. With her and Menela
it's a case of Greek meeting Greek. Will she be clever enough to pull me
through?"

XXXII

I knew I looked haggard, and hoped I looked interesting,