“This chap seems only stunned,” she heard him say as he bent over her, then as he looked closer, she heard him exclaim: 

“My God, it’s Jane!”

In an instant he was down at her side on his knees.  Tenderly one of his arms went about her and lifted her head.

“Miss Strong, Jane, Jane,” he implored, “Jane dear, speak to me.”

Stunned though she still was a flush crept into Jane’s cheeks at the unexpected term of endearment, though she still kept her eyes closed.  Gently he laid her back on the turf and hastened to the automobile, returning with a flask which he held to her lips.  Slowly Jane opened her eyes.

“Thank God,” he cried.  “Jane dear, tell me you are not hurt.”

For a moment she lay there, staring wonderingly at him as he bent over her imploringly, the tenderest of anxiety showing in every line of his face.  Unprotestingly she let him slip his strong arm once more under her head.  In her dazed brain there was a strange conflict of peculiar emotions.  He was a German, a spy,—­she hated him, and yet it was wonderfully comforting to her to have him there.  Under other circumstances she could have loved him.  He was so handsome, so masterful and so kind, too.  He cared for her.  Had he not called her “Jane, dear” in his amazement at finding her lying there?  But she must not let herself think of him in that way.  It was her duty, her sacred duty to trap him, to thwart his nefarious plans against her country.  She must do her duty just as her soldier brother was doing his in far away France.

Still supported by Hoff’s arms she sat up, trying to collect her thoughts and gingerly testing the movement of her arms and limbs.

“Tell me,” he cried again, “Jane, dear, are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” she managed to say.

With his assistance she got up on her feet and walked uncertainly to the car, shuddering as she looked at Dean’s crumpled senseless body.

“Your friend,” said Hoff, as he placed her in the forward seat and wrapped a rug about her, “I am afraid, is badly hurt.”

“It’s our chauffeur, Thomas Dean,” she explained confusedly.

She had been wondering what she could say to Frederic to account for her presence there.  It was unconventional at least for a girl to be motorcycling about the country dressed in man’s clothes with a chauffeur.  Hoff must surely realize now that she had been shadowing him.  She felt almost certain that he had known it from the very first, since that afternoon when he had overheard her telephoning about the “fifth book.”  Yet never by word or manner had he betrayed the fact that he suspected her.  Beyond his customary reserve in speaking about himself or his activities, there was nothing to indicate that he knew anything yet.  Whatever she told him now she must be careful not to betray her mission.  Perhaps even in spite of all that had happened she still might be able to aid Chief Fleck in trapping them.