Ann spun round on her heel.
"Very well. I shall go."
"Then I should destroy that letter"; and she made as if to tear it.
"No!" cried Ann, and she held out her hand for it "I don't know Madame Le Vay's house very well. I might easily lose my way without the instructions. I must take it with me."
Betty agreed and handed the letter back.
"You want to go quite quietly," she said, and she threw herself heart and soul into the necessary arrangements.
She would give Francine Rollard a holiday and herself help Ann to dress in her fanciful and glistening frock. She wrote a letter to Michel Le Vay, Madame Le Vay's second son and one of Betty's most indefatigable courtiers. Fortunately for himself, Michel Le Vay kept that letter, and it saved him from any charge of complicity in her plot. For Betty used to him the same argument which had persuaded Jim Frobisher. She wrote frankly that suspicion had centred upon Ann Upcott and that it was necessary that she should get away secretly.
"All the plans have been made, Michel," she wrote. "Ann will come late. She is to meet the friends who will help her—it is best that you should know as little as possible about them—in the little library. If you will keep the corridor clear for a little while, they can get out by the library doors into the park and be in Paris the next morning."
She sealed up this letter without showing it to Ann and said, "I will send this by a messenger to-morrow morning, with orders to deliver it into Michel's own hands. Now how are you to go?"
Over that point the two girls had some discussion. It would be inviting Hanaud's interference if the big limousine were ordered out. What more likely than that he should imagine Ann meant to run away and that Betty was helping her? That plan certainly would not do.