“Where is Monsieur Roosen?”
“Roosen?” she echoed in rather a blank voice, gazing at her companion across the table. He noticed that her countenance changed. But it was only for a moment. “Oh! you mean the—the other secretary who always travels with Monsieur le Directeur. Ah! I do not know, m’sieur. He is away.”
Her confused attitude when he had unexpectedly mentioned Roosen’s name struck him as distinctly curious. Mademoiselle Odille was very charming, it was true, but she was somewhat of an enigma.
Presently she put on her gloves, and rose.
“Thank you, monsieur, for a very excellent déjeuner,” she said. “And now I must leave you to your wires and bewildering apparatus, and get back to Namur and on to Brussels.”
“You must come and see the official tests on Wednesday, mademoiselle. No doubt you will like to hear the wireless telephone,” he said.
“I shall. I’m intensely interested,” she declared. “But remember on Tuesday I will meet you here at about seven and take you over to the Château de Rochehaut.”
And she got into the car and drove away.
Geoffrey telephoned over to the aerodrome to send the service car over for the box of apparatus, and when it arrived, he drove across the river and through the ancient village of Bouvignes. The old place, surmounted by the ancient ruins of Crêve Cœur, the castle where the Three Ladies of Crêve Cœur, sole survivors of the garrison besieged by the Duc de Nevers in 1554, hurled themselves from the tower to death in the eyes of their French conquerors, was quiet and out of the world. But Geoffrey was much preoccupied as the car tore through the dusty village and away up to the plain, where the great new aviation ground was being constructed.
On one side stood the row of up-to-date hangars, with all the latest inventions of British and French aviation, while on the other, facing it, rose the aerial wires on eighty-feet poles temporarily erected, for the lattice masts were in process of manufacture.