sent to the same school in
France where she herself had been educated--Madame de Maluet's.

Never once has her guardian shown the slightest sign of interest in
Ellaline: hasn't asked for her photograph or written her any letters.
They've communicated with each other only through Madame de Maluet, four
times a year or so; and Ellaline doesn't feel sure that her fortune has
been properly administered, so she says she ought to marry young and
have a husband to look after her interests.

When I ventured to hope that the Dragon wasn't quite so scaly and taily
as she painted him, she proved her point by telling me that he'd been
censured lately in the English Radical papers for killing a lot of poor,
defenceless Bengalese in cold blood. Somebody must have sent her the
cuttings, for Ellaline hardly knows that newspapers exist. I dare say it
was Kathy Bennett, one of Madame's few English pupils. Ellaline has
chummed up with her lately. And that news does seem to settle the man's
character, doesn't it? He must be a perfect brute.

Ellaline says that she'd rather die than lose Honore, also that he'll
kill himself if he loses her. And now, dearest--now for the Thunderbolt!
She vows that the only thing which can possibly save her is for _me to
take her place for five or six weeks_, until her soldier's manoeuvres
are over and he can get leave to whisk her off to Scotland for the
wedding.

You're the quickest-witted darling in the world, and you generally know
all that people mean even before they speak. Yet I can see you looking
puzzled as well as startled, and muttering to yourself: "Take Ellaline's
place? Where--how--when?"

I was like that myself while she was trying to explain. I stared with an
owlish stare for about five minutes, until her real idea in all its
native wildness, not to say enormity, burst upon me.

She wants to go day after to-morrow to Madame de Blanchemain's, as she'd
expected to do before she heard that the Dragon was coming to gobble her
up. She wants to stay there quietly until Honore can take her, and she
wants _me to pretend to be Ellaline Lethbridge_!

I nearly fell off my chair at this point, but I hope you won't do
anything like that--which is the reason why I've been working up to the
revelation with such fiendish subtlety. Have you noticed it?

Ellaline has plotted the whole scheme out. I shouldn't have thought her
capable of it; but she says it's desperation.

She's certain she can persuade