She stopped him with a smiling gesture.

“I don’t mean that—yet,” she said. “I wanted to know whether it would be possible for you to go away for a little time, if someone paid all your expenses.”

“To go away!” he repeated blankly. “What for?”

Mademoiselle Violet leaned a little nearer to him.

“My mistress asked me yesterday,” she said, “if I knew anyone who could be trusted who would go away, at a moment’s notice, on an errand for her.”

“Your mistress,” he repeated. “You really are a lady’s maid, then, are you?”

“Of course!” she answered impatiently. “Haven’t I told you so before? Now what do you say? Will you go?”

“I dunno,” he answered thoughtfully. “If it had been for you, I don’t know that I’d have minded. I ain’t fond of traveling.”

“It is for me,” she interrupted hastily. “If I can find her anyone who will do what she wants, she will make my fortune. She has promised. And then—”

“Well, and then?”