“It is — it is altogether magnifique!” she gasped. “It is a coup the most superb! Not even I dreamed of anything so superb!” She sat up and dabbed at her eyes. “ Voyons, was there ever such a man? I myself am ready to believe him to be Lord Barham. What an air! What effrontery! Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, I have not been in such an agony of laughter since he stole the Margrave’s mistress!”
“That’s a tale I don’t know,” said Prudence. “I perceive that a hurried flight to France awaits us.”
“But no, but no! Why, my cabbage? He proves himself the lost vicomte, and who is to know more?”
“Oh, it’s simple!” said Robin dryly. “But there is always the possibility of the true viscount’s appearance.”
“How, my child? We see the bon papa with all the papers. The real viscount is dead, of course! How else could Robert have the papers?”
“Good God, ma’am, do you put it above the old gentleman to steal them from a live man?”
“There’s more to it than that.” Prudence’s calm voice broke in. “A counterfeit for a day, a week, a month is very well, but even the old gentleman can’t maintain it for ever. Rensley won’t be satisfied with a few documents. There’ll be traps set, and others of no one’s setting into which he is bound to fall. Consider, ma’am, what it means suddenly to become an English peer with estates, and a large fortune! The thing’s not so easily done, I believe.”
“There’s also the little matter of the late fracas in the North,” said Robin. “Certain, he discards the black wig, and the French accent, but there must be information out against him.”
“My children, I have faith in him!” her ladyship declared. “He is as I have said — magnifique!”