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Rh like the results of your act." His tone was half earnest half jest; and she looked up puzzled.

"What is my crime?"

"You have given us splendid help in many ways; but I'm sadly out if our last mischances are not to be traced to that habit of yours—of making fools of us men."

"Sadly out! I'm sadly out if you did not say that with a rare spice of relish. Sadly, indeed! Is this one of M. Burgher's curtain lectures?"

"If you were still Madame Burgher, it might be," he laughed.

"But I've gone back to Lucette, thank you, monsieur."

"Aye, the Lucette whom the officer at the gate recognized."

She understood him then. "You don't think?" she said eagerly.

"What I don't think is not of much account. But I do think that any man who has once been under fire from your dark eyes would not readily forget them. He had not forgotten them, and they set him thinking too."

"Oh, how cruel you are! To blame me in this way."

"Blame you? It is the fortune of things. But if you think there's a lesson in the thing, that good fellow of yours, Denys St. Jean, mightn't be sorry if you learnt it. A thing of that sort is pretty much like a forest fire: you can start it easily, but you never know what may be burnt or how far it may spread before it's put out."

"I ought to be grateful to you for first frightening and then lecturing me at a time like this," cried Lucette angrily.

"My punishment to you would be to sentence you to stop it for the future. That's all. And now I've said my say," he answered; and then, with a reassuring laugh, added: "As for this, it will be nothing. Have no fear.