“You may put my presence down to that, if you wish,” she replied. “But promise me, on your word of honour, that you will not breathe a single word to a soul—not even to Lord Barmouth.”
“If you impose silence upon me, Léonie, it shall be as you wish. But you have just said that you can assist me. How?”
“I can do so—if I choose,” she responded thoughtfully, drawing the profile of a man’s face in the dust with the ferrule of her walking-stick.
“You speak strangely,” I said—“almost as though you do not intend to do me this service. Surely you will not withhold from me intelligence which might enable me to rescue my country from the machination of its enemies?”
“And why, pray, should I betray my own country in order to save yours?” she asked in a cold tone.
I was nonplussed. For a moment I could not reply. At last, however, I answered in a low, earnest tone:
“Because we are friends, Léonie.”
“Mere friendship does not warrant one turning traitor,” she replied.
“But Austria is not the prime mover of this conspiracy,” I said. “The rulers of another nation have formed the plot. Tell me which of the Powers is responsible?”
“No,” she answered with a slight hauteur. “As you have thought fit to preserve certain secrets from me, I shall keep this knowledge to myself.”