It was upon my tongue to lay bare to her the secret of my heart’s longings, yet I hesitated. I remembered that calm, serious, sweet-faced woman on the other side of the English Channel, far from the glare and glitter of life as I knew it—the fevered life which the diplomat in Paris is forced to lead. I remembered my troth to Edith, and my conscience pricked me.
“Could it be possible,” I reflected, “that Yolande was really in the pay of a Government hostile to England?” Kaye was already nearing Berlin with the intention of searching out her actions and exposing her as a spy, while Anderson had already denounced her as having been a party to an attempt to secure the secret which he had carried from Berlin to Downing Street.
With a mother’s solicitude the Countess could for some time only speak of Yolande’s mysterious attack; but at last, in order to prosecute my inquiries further, I observed, during a lull in the conversation:
“At the Baroness de Chalencon’s last night a friend of yours inquired about you, madame.”
“A friend? Who?”
“A man named Wolf—Rodolphe Wolf.”
The next instant I saw that the mention of that name affected the mother no less markedly than it had affected the daughter. Her face blanched; her eyes opened wide in fear, and her glance became in a moment suspicious. With marvellous self-possession she, however, pretended ignorance.
“Wolf?” she repeated. “I do not remember the name. Possibly he is some person we have met while travelling.”
“Yolande knew him, I believe, in Brussels,” I remarked. “He appeared to be acquainted with you.”
“My daughter’s friends are not always mine,” she remarked coldly, with that cleverness which only a woman of the world can possess, and at once returned to the discussion of Yolande and the probability of her recovery.