She looked at him petulantly.
"What of it?" she demanded. "We all run risks when we do anything worth while."
"Not quite the sort that you have been facing."
She smiled thoughtfully.
"Do you know exactly where I have been?" she asked.
"No idea," he confessed. "What my uncle has just told me was a complete revelation, so far as I was concerned. I believed, with the rest of the world, what the newspapers announced—that you were visiting Japan and China, and afterwards the South Sea Islands, with the Wendercombes."
She smiled.
"Dad wanted to tell you," she said, "but it was I who made him promise not to. I was afraid you would be disagreeable about it. We arranged it all with the Wendercombes, but as a matter of fact I did not even start with them. For the last eight months, I have been living part of the time in Berlin and part of the time in a country house near the Black Forest."
"Alone?"
"Not a bit of it! I have been governess to the two daughters of Herr Essendorf."