"Oh, my coming here was a very simple matter. Sent to England as a prisoner, I escaped to France, and there fell in with an English nobleman, whose travels brought him this way. I am his secretary. It is not known I am an American."
"My coming here was quite as simple," said she, with a slight smile. " My brother and I came to France to receive a small bequest left by a cousin of my mother's. In Paris we met a distant relation,—one of the ladies of her highness the Landgravine. When she returned to Cassel, she obtained for me a post as lady-in-waiting. French people are in request at the German courts."
"And Monsieur Gerard?"
"My brother is in the foot-guards."
"I should like to see him," said Dick, and added, with special intention, "I suppose he has forgotten me."
"Oh, no, monsieur," she replied, quite artlessly; "we have often talked of you. Our gratitude for recovering the portrait, and risking your life to bring it to us—"
"'Twas the opportunity of risking it to serve you, that made my life worth having," he said, in a tone little above a whisper.
"My brother will be glad to learn that your life was surely saved," she replied, avoiding Dick's glance.
"And you, who saved it?"
"I, too, of course."