said I. 'As it happens, he interfered to save my life last night.'

'To save your life! From whom?'

'From two conspirators whose plans I had chanced to discover.'

'Conspirators!' She looked at me in surprise.

'They would have killed me if he had not intervened.'

'It is not his interest that you should be harmed yet awhile. He had
reasons for wishing you to come to Castle Grosbois. But I have been
very frank with you, and I wish you to be equally so with me. Does it
happen--does it happen that during your youth in England you have ever--you
have ever had an affair of the heart?'

Everything which this cousin of mine said appeared to me to be stranger
than the last, and this question, coming at the end of so serious a
conversation, was the strangest of all. But frankness begets frankness,
and I did not hesitate.

'I have left the very best and truest girl in the world behind me in
England,' said I. 'Eugenie is her name, Eugenie de Choiseul, the niece
of the old Duke.'

My reply seemed to give my cousin great satisfaction. Her large dark
eyes shone with pleasure.

'You are very attached?' she asked.