Her voice broke in a sob. The secret agent, deeply moved, took her hand and pressed it to his lips. Then, hurriedly, he gathered up the remaining papers out of the tin box, slipped them into his pocket and left the room.
By and by his firm voice was heard giving orders to his men to mount.
But as soon as his slim, grey-clad figure had disappeared across the landing, Constance ran to the door and closed it with a bang. For a moment she stood quite still, gazing in the direction whence came the sound of the enemy's retreating footsteps. An unmistakable look of triumph and satisfaction filled her eyes. The next instant, however, she was down on her knees beside her mother, half-sobbing, half-laughing, her cheeks flushed even beneath the rouge. "There was nothing in the tin box, maman," she cried somewhat wildly. "Only a few worthless letters, with nothing in them to compromise any of us seriously. Oh, but I have got him, maman! I have got him as surely as he got Monsieur de Saint-Tropèze. In a month from now I shall be able to twist him round my little finger—and then—and then——"
But Mme. de Plélan did not hear the girl's strange, half-hysterical ravings. She was lying unconscious, her pale face looking ghostlike against the silk cushion of her chair.
III
Less than a month later, on a clear, cold afternoon early in February, a woman, wrapped from head to foot in a dark mantle, was making her way along the main road which cuts straight through the Cache-Renard woods between Alençon and Plélan. She came from the direction of the château and walked briskly, holding her mantle closely round her shoulders.
When she arrived at the clearing where crossroads met and intersected the main one, she paused for a moment, listened intently for a second or two, then struck into the wood along a side track on her left. She followed this track for two hundred mètres or so, then suddenly plunged into the thicket.
The undergrowth here was very dense. Overhead the grey light of the late winter's afternoon filtered through the branches of the trees, guiding the woman on her way. Suddenly, out of the thicket, a gruff voice called out, "Who goes there?" and the woman without hesitation replied, "One who has courage and courts success."
Immediately a dark form detached itself from out the undergrowth.
"Is it you, Blue-Heart?" asked the woman sharply.