“It didn’t matter a brass farden!” I hastened to assure her, for she had paused and was gazing at me, large-eyed and pale.  “Don’t think of that any more.  Suppose we skip to Paris!  Blenheim followed you there, hoping he was on the scent of the vanished papers; and when you arrived at the rue St.-Dominique, there was still no news of the duke.”

“No news,” she mourned; “not a word.  And Enid was ill and hopeless; from the very first she had felt sure that Jean was dead.  But I wouldn’t admit it.  I said we must try to find him.  All the way over in the steamer I had been making a sort of plan.

“You see, one of the papers had described how the French had found Jean’s airship lying in the forest of La Fay, as if he had abandoned it from choice.  That was considered proof of his treason; but of course I knew that it wasn’t.  I remembered that the Marquis of Prezelay, Jean’s cousin, had a castle on the forest outskirts; I had been to visit it with Jean and Enid.  I wondered if he might be there.

“The more I thought of it, the likelier it seemed.  If he had been wounded and had wanted to hide his papers, he would have remembered the castle and the secret panel in the wall.  Even if he were—­dead, which I wouldn’t believe, it would clear his name if I found the proof of it.  So I told Enid I would go to Prezelay.”

I was resting my arms on my knees and groaning softly.

“Oh, Lord, oh, Lord!” I murmured, wishing I could stop my ears.  When I thought of that brave venture of the girl’s and its perils and what had nearly come of it I found myself shuddering; and yet I was growing prouder of her with every word.

“What comes next,” she confessed, “is terrible.  I can hardly believe it.  As I look back, it seems to me that we were all a little mad.  To get through the war zone to Prezelay I had to have certain papers; and I got them from an American girl, an old friend of Enid’s and of mine, Marie Le Clair.  The morning I arrived in Paris she came to say good-bye to Enid.  She was acting as a Red Cross nurse, and they were sending her to the hospital at Carrefonds to take the first consignment of the great new remedy for burns and scars.  Carrefonds is very near Prezelay.  It all came to me in a moment.  I told her how matters stood and how Enid was dying little by little, just for lack of any sure knowledge.  She gave me the papers she had for herself and her chauffeur, Jacques Carton, and I used them for myself and for Georges, Jean’s foster-brother, who was at home from the Front on leave and was staying in his old room at the house.”

“Great Caesar’s ghost!” I sputtered.  “You didn’t—­you don’t mean to say that—­Why, good heavens, didn’t you know—?”

Then I petered off into silence; words were too weak for my emotions.  She had seen the risk of course, and so had the girl who had helped her; but with the incredible bravery of women, they had acted with open eyes.