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252 "Mademoiselle, do you know you can be an excellent actress?"

As if in resentment the girl glanced upward sharply, with clouded eyes.

"So can most women, in emergency."

"I mean … I have something serious to say; nobody must guess your thoughts."

She said simply: "I will do my best."

"You must—you must appear quite charmed. Also, should you catch me smirking like an infatuated ninny, remember I am only doing my own indifferent best to act."

Laughter trembled deliciously in her voice: "I promise faithfully to bear in mind your heartlessness!"

"I am an ass," he enunciated with the humility of conviction. "But that can't be helped. Attend to me, if you please—and do not start. This place turns out to be a nest of Prussian spies. I was brought here by a trick. I understand the order is I may not leave alive."

Playing her part so well as almost to embarrass Lanyard himself, the girl smiled daringly into his eyes.

"Because of that packet?" she breathed.

"Because of that, mademoiselle."

"Where is it?"

For an instant Lanyard lost countenance absolutely. Through sheer good fortune the girl was now dancing with face averted, her head so nearly touching his shoulder that it seemed to rest upon it.

Nevertheless, it was at cost of an heroic struggle that he fought down all signs of that shock with which it had