when she was a pretty kid in short skirts until she had made her debut
and the American ambassadress had presented her at Buckingham Palace. At
various stages of our lives, both Francis and I had been in love with
her, I believe, but my life in the army had kept me much abroad, so
Francis had seen most of her and had been the hardest hit.

Then the father died and Monica went travelling abroad in great state,
as befits a young heiress, with a prodigiously respectable American
chaperon and a retinue of retainers. I never knew the rights of the case
between her and Francis, but at one of the German embassies abroad--I
think in Vienna--she met the young Count Rachwitz, head of one of the
great Silesian noble houses, and married him.

It was not on the usual rock--money--that this German-American marriage
was wrecked, for the Count was very wealthy himself. I had supposed that
the German man's habitual attitude of mind towards women had not suited
the girl's independent spirit on hearing that Monica, a few years after
her marriage, had left her husband and gone to live in America. I had
not seen her since she left London, and, though we wrote to one another
at intervals, I had not heard from her since the war started and had no
idea that she had returned to Germany. Monica Rachwitz was, in fact, the
last person I should ever have expected to meet in Berlin in war-time.

So, as briefly as I could and listening intently throughout for any
sounds from the corridor, I gave the two women the story of the
disappearance of Francis and my journey into Germany to look for him. At
the mention of my brother's name, I noticed that the girl stiffened and
her face grew rigid, but when I told her of my fears for his safety her
blue eyes seemed to me to grow dim. I described to them my adventure in
the hotel at Rotterdam, my reception in the house of General von Boden,