"Monsieur," she said, "Fräulein von Graffenfried is my friend, and you must know that I have no secrets from those I have once called by that name. You can speak freely before her. Indeed, I ask you to."
There was only one way out of the impasse. Stammering in the approved manner of those with nothing definite to say, I told her as well as I could about my conversation with Professor Thierry in the course of which I had first heard the name of Baron von Boose.
Aurora of Lautenburg's forehead showed a wrinkle.
"I understand," she murmured at length, "or, rather, I think I understand, in spite of the intentional reservations in your story."
She reflected a moment, then recovered her wonted calm and said:
"This proves, monsieur, how much one should distrust hasty conclusions. I do not know where your Professor Thierry went for the story with which he has stuffed your head. If, as you say, he is a conscientious historian, I think he would have acted less precipitately if he had been in possession of this—and this."
She handed me the letter I had just seen and with it another.
"These," she explained, "are two of the last letters written to me from the Congo by the Grand Duke Rudolph. In the first he tells me how he was saved by Ulrich von Boose from a buffalo which had killed his horse; in the second, how this same Boose rescued him from five or six natives who would have given him a bad time."
She looked at me with a smile while I read the passages she indicated.
I bowed, feeling somewhat sheepish.