“Just as many other people could not resist—if they knew what secrets this despatch-box of mine sometimes contains,” he laughed. “Well, nurse, I forgive you,” he added cheerfully, his manner changing. “Go back to Lord Bracondale, and make haste and get him well again. England is sorely in need of him to-day—I can assure you.”
“Does he wish for me?”
“Yes, he gave me a message asking you to return to him at once.”
“I’ll go, then,” she replied. “I’m so glad you’ve forgiven me. My action was, I know, horribly mean and quite unpardonable. Good evening.”
“Good evening, nurse,” Darnborough responded, as he busied himself repacking his papers. She left the room.
The great man of secrets was, as yet, in ignorance that the pretty, graceful, half-French nurse and Fräulein Montague, Dick Harborne’s friend, were one and the same person.
At that moment he had been talking with the very woman whom his agents had been hunting the whole of Europe to find. Yet he bowed her out of the room in entire ignorance of that fact.
And as she ascended the great, broad, thickly-carpeted staircase to the sick man’s room she was filled with regret that Darnborough had not entered five minutes later, when, by that time, she would have learnt the secret of what was contained in those papers concerning Dick Harborne’s death.
Her head swam as she recalled that tragic afternoon and also the afternoon succeeding it, when she had witnessed the terrible accident to Noel Barclay, the naval aviator. She recollected how Ralph had been at her side in the cab when they had both witnessed the collapse of the aeroplane, and how utterly callous and unmoved he had been.
For the thousandth time she asked herself whether Ralph Ansell, her dead husband, had ever discovered her friendship with Richard Harborne. It was a purely platonic friendship. Their stations in life had been totally different, yet he had always treated her gallantly, and she had, in return, consented to assist him in several matters—“matters of business” he had termed them. And in connection with one of them she had gone to Germany as Fräulein Montague and met him on that memorable day when she acted as a go-between.