Set in Silver | Page 4

was half French, they were cousins, and I believe her
dying request was that he should take care of her daughter and her
daughter's money. You would have thought that that must have
softened even a hard heart, wouldn't you? But the Dragon's was
evidently sentiment-proof, even so many years ago, when he must have
been comparatively young--if Dragons are ever young.
He accepted the charge (Ellaline thinks her money probably influenced

him to do that; and perhaps he was paid for his trouble); but, instead of
carrying out his engagements, like a faithful guardian, he packed the
poor four-year-old baby off to some pokey, prim people in the country,
and promptly went abroad to enjoy himself. There Ellaline would no
doubt have been left to this day, dreadfully unhappy and out of her
element, for the people were an English curate and his wife; but,
luckily, her mother had stipulated that she was to be sent to the same
school in France where she herself had been educated--Madame de
Maluet's.
Never once has her guardian shown the slightest sign of interest in
Ellaline: hasn't asked for her photograph or written her any letters.
They've communicated with each other only through Madame de
Maluet, four times a year or so; and Ellaline doesn't feel sure that her
fortune has been properly administered, so she says she ought to marry
young and have a husband to look after her interests.
When I ventured to hope that the Dragon wasn't quite so scaly and taily
as she painted him, she proved her point by telling me that he'd been
censured lately in the English Radical papers for killing a lot of poor,
defenceless Bengalese in cold blood. Somebody must have sent her the
cuttings, for Ellaline hardly knows that newspapers exist. I dare say it
was Kathy Bennett, one of Madame's few English pupils. Ellaline has
chummed up with her lately. And that news does seem to settle the
man's character, doesn't it? He must be a perfect brute.
Ellaline says that she'd rather die than lose Honoré, also that he'll kill
himself if he loses her. And now, dearest--now for the Thunderbolt!
She vows that the only thing which can possibly save her is for me to
take her place for five or six weeks, until her soldier's manoeuvres are
over and he can get leave to whisk her off to Scotland for the wedding.
You're the quickest-witted darling in the world, and you generally
know all that people mean even before they speak. Yet I can see you
looking puzzled as well as startled, and muttering to yourself: "Take
Ellaline's place? Where--how--when?"
I was like that myself while she was trying to explain. I stared with an

owlish stare for about five minutes, until her real idea in all its native
wildness, not to say enormity, burst upon me.
She wants to go day after to-morrow to Madame de Blanchemain's, as
she'd expected to do before she heard that the Dragon was coming to
gobble her up. She wants to stay there quietly until Honoré can take her,
and she wants me to pretend to be Ellaline Lethbridge!
I nearly fell off my chair at this point, but I hope you won't do anything
like that--which is the reason why I've been working up to the
revelation with such fiendish subtlety. Have you noticed it?
Ellaline has plotted the whole scheme out. I shouldn't have thought her
capable of it; but she says it's desperation.
She's certain she can persuade Madame de Maluet to let her leave
school, to go to the station and meet the Dragon (that's the course he
himself suggests: too much trouble even to run out to Versailles and
fetch her) with only me as chaperon. I dare say she's right about
Madame, for all the teachers will be gone day after to-morrow, and
Madame herself invariably collapses the moment school breaks up: she
seems to break up with it, and to have to lie in bed for at least half a
week to be mended.
Madame has really quite a flattering opinion of my discretion. She's
told me so several times. I suppose it's the way I do my hair for school,
which does give me a look of incorruptible virtue, doesn't it?
Fortunately she doesn't know I always change it (if not too tired) ten
minutes after I get home to you.
Well, then, taking Madame's permission for granted, Ellaline points out
that all stumbling-blocks are removed, for she won't count moral ones,
or let me count them.
I'm to see her off for St. Cloud, and wait to receive the Dragon. "Sir,
behold the burnt-offering--I mean, behold your ward!"
And I'm to go on being a burnt-offering till it's convenient for the real

Ellaline to scrape