Set in Silver

								

censured lately in the English Radical papers for killing a lot of poor,
defenceless Bengalese in cold blood. Somebody must have sent her the
cuttings, for Ellaline hardly knows that newspapers exist. I dare say it
was Kathy Bennett, one of Madame's few English pupils. Ellaline has
chummed up with her lately. And that news does seem to settle the man's
character, doesn't it? He must be a perfect brute.
Ellaline says that she'd rather die than lose Honoré, also that he'll
kill himself if he loses her. And now, dearest--now for the Thunderbolt!
She vows that the only thing which can possibly save her is for me to
take her place for five or six weeks, until her soldier's manoeuvres
are over and he can get leave to whisk her off to Scotland for the
wedding.
You're the quickest-witted darling in the world, and you generally know
all that people mean even before they speak. Yet I can see you looking
puzzled as well as startled, and muttering to yourself: "Take Ellaline's
place? Where--how--when?"
I was like that myself while she was trying to explain. I stared with an
owlish stare for about five minutes, until her real idea in all its
native wildness, not to say enormity, burst upon me.
She wants to go day after to-morrow to Madame de Blanchemain's, as she'd
expected to do before she heard that the Dragon was coming to gobble her
up. She wants to stay there quietly until Honoré can take her, and she
wants me to pretend to be Ellaline Lethbridge!
I nearly fell off my chair at this point, but I hope you won't do
anything like that--which is the reason why I've been working up to the
revelation with such fiendish subtlety. Have you noticed it?
Ellaline has plotted the whole scheme out. I shouldn't have thought her
capable of it; but she says it's desperation.
She's certain she can persuade Madame de Maluet to let her leave school,
to go to the station and meet the Dragon (that's the course he himself
suggests: too much trouble even to run out to Versailles and fetch her)
with only me as chaperon. I dare say she's right about Madame, for all
the teachers will be gone day after to-morrow, and Madame herself
invariably collapses the moment school breaks up: she seems to break up
with it, and to have to lie in bed for at least half a week to be
mended.
Madame has really quite a flattering opinion of my discretion. She's
told me so several times. I suppose it's the way I do my hair for
school, which does give me a look of incorruptible virtue, doesn't it?
Fortunately she doesn't know I always change it (if not too tired) ten
minutes after I get home to you.
Well, then, taking Madame's permission for granted, Ellaline points out
that all stumbling-blocks are removed, for she won't count moral ones,
or let me count them.
I'm to see her off for St. Cloud, and wait to receive the Dragon. "Sir,
behold the burnt-offering--I mean, behold your ward!"
And I'm to go on being a burnt-offering till it's convenient for the