Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/125

Rh me go," she said. Then, as he still halted, "It is your only chance of safety," she said.

He cast a frightened glance around him. "We will go together," he replied. "In Heaven's name."

The light of joy that had suffused her face died away to a smile over the last three words.

"In whatever name," she said, softly. "We will go together."

"But your mother!" he protested. "The cackling—"

She laid her hand against his mouth. "I will go to Amsterdam this afternoon, by the diligence, to buy cosmetics," she said. "We will meet there, after nightfall, at some small inn."

"No," he answered, "at the Doelen Hotel, to avoid all suspicion. From there we will go to some private place—for the night, as they think,—and so get away."

Whilst these arrangements were being made at Haarlem, Agnes was preparing herself as best she could to face her father on his return. The terrible hours of doubt and speculation passed, as such hours will, in swift eddies and stagnant swamps. They brought her no satisfactory solution, nor had she expected them to do so; nothing remained but to bear the consequences of what was almost a crime. "They will not kill you," had been Floris's farewell. She supposed not.

Her father came home late—which was early, for in those days people dined at four. She had to meet him and her brothers and sisters at table. But nobody noticed how she looked.

She was gulping down a spoonful or two of soup, when the servant announced the Englishman. Her portly father laid down his napkin. "Dear me, yes," he said. "The Englishman. Of course. I had forgotten all about him." So peaking, the Prefect rose with leisurely dignity and proceeded to cross the white marble vestibule.

Before he reached his door a faint call arrested him.

"Father!" said Agnes.

"My dear child, I shall be back in a moment. What is it?" he asked, testily.

"Let me speak to you first." She threw open the drawing-room door. He followed, annoyed.

"You will not find the passport," she said.

"Well, then, get it," he answered, supposing she had locked it up for safety.

"I—I can't," she said, helplessly. "I have given it away."

He did not laugh nor cry out at her. He understood at once—so serious were the times—that he was face to face with some tragedy. And his first thought was naturally of himself, the Emperor's Dutch Prefect, in his exposed position, of his children and his house. He closed the door.

"Tell me at once what mad thing you have done," he said, sternly.

And she told him, in broken accents, of her cousin's despair and her help. He was chiefly shocked by the fact that the whole scheme, which ought to have passed through his hands, had been elaborated without his knowledge. "It is a deed of personal enmity against Floris," he remarked. "And your action all the more dangerous on that account. What enemy can he have?"

"I know of none."

"Some one who has influence with the military commander," reflected the Prefect. "Some rival—" The word at once led him to an accurate solution, for he knew of Mademoiselle Marguerite and her mother's "beauty-shop," frequented by all the young officers of Haarlem. He checked himself, and reverting to the question of immediate importance, "A pretty mess we are in," he said. "I must make this man out a new passport. No, that will not help us. Good heavens! Agnes, you must get back that paper, or I don't know what may happen." He seemed hardly to realize the predicament before; now his stately cheeks grew pale.

She answered calmly, for one contingency at least she had thought out during that long afternoon. "You must put off the Englishman till to-morrow. In the morning I will go to the military commander and confess what I have done. He is a man of rank and a Frenchman. I am not a bit afraid of him, father."

The Prefect smiled in spite of himself. After all, the chief thing the unknown enemy had wanted was manifestly the young man's removal, whether to Russia