"None," she answered a little coldly,—"no personal interest. I sent that message because I discovered that the individual who has just passed us in the automobile was framing certain schemes in connection with you if you should come to Paris. Politically as well as personally he and I are enemies. He hates America and the whole Anglo-Saxon race. It has amused me more than once to thwart his schemes. I intended to set you upon your guard. You see, it is very simple. Mademoiselle Senn wrote me at first that she did not know you and that she feared you were inaccessible. Then she wired me of an accidental meeting and that she had delivered my message. The whole affair is simpler than it seemed, is it not so?… Now listen. I have satisfied your curiosity. You now shall answer a question. Who is Miss Clonarty?"
Julien gazed at her in astonishment.
"Miss Clonarty?" he repeated.
Madame Christophor nodded.
"The name seems to surprise you. A young English woman called on me to-day in answer to my advertisement for a secretary who could write and speak English. She said that her name was Miss Anne Clonarty and she referred me to you."
"If she is the lady whom I suppose she is," Julien replied, "you will be perfectly safe in engaging her."
Madame Christophor looked at him from underneath the lids of her eyes.
"Do you think that I do not know?" she asked, with a shade of contempt in her tone,—"that I do not sometimes read the papers? Do you think that I have not seen that Lady Anne Clonarty, the girl whom you were engaged to marry, disappeared from her home the other day, on the eve of her marriage to another man? It is this girl who comes to me for my situation, is it not so?"
Julien was silent.
"I knew nothing of her coming. I did not even know that you wanted a secretary."