The Powers and Maxine | Page 8

the agony of her loss. She will kill herself if

disaster comes; and though suicide is usually the last resource of a
coward, Mademoiselle de Renzie is no coward, and I'm inclined to
think I should come to the same resolve in her place."
"Tell me what I am to do," said Ivor, evidently moved by the Foreign
Secretary's strange words, and his intense earnestness.
"You will go to Paris by the first train to-morrow morning, without
mentioning your intention to anyone; you will drive at once to some
hotel where you have never stayed and are not known. I will find
means of informing the lady what hotel you choose. You will there
give a fictitious name (let us say, George Sandford) and you will take a
suite, with a private sitting-room. That done, you will say that you are
expecting a lady to call upon you, and will see no one else. You will
wait till Mademoiselle de Renzie appears, which will certainly be as
soon as she can possibly manage; and when you and she are alone
together, sure that you're not being spied upon, you will put into her
hands a small packet which I shall give you before we part to-night."
"It sounds simple enough," said Ivor, "if that's all."
"It is all. Yet it may be anything but simple."
"Would you prefer to have me call at her house, and save her coming to
a hotel? I'd willingly do so if--"
"No. As I told you, should it be known that you and she meet, those
who are watching her at present ought not to suspect the real motive of
the meeting. So much the better for us: but we must think of her. After
four o'clock every afternoon, the young Frenchman she's engaged to is
in the habit of going to her house, and stopping until it's time for her to
go to work. He dines with her, but doesn't drive with her to the theatre,
as that would be rather too public for the present, until their
engagement's announced. He adores her, but is inconveniently jealous,
like most Latins. It's practically certain that he's heard your name
mentioned in connection with hers, when she was in London, and as a
Frenchman invariably fails to understand that a man can admire a
beautiful woman without being in love with her, your call at her house

might give Mademoiselle Maxine a mauvais quart d'heure."
"I see. But if she sends him away, and comes to my hotel--"
"She'll probably make some excuse about being obliged to go to the
theatre early, and thus get rid of him. She's quite clever enough to
manage that. Then, as your own name won't appear on any hotel list in
the papers next day, the most jealous heart need have no cause for
suspicion. At the same time, if certain persons whom
Mademoiselle--and we, too--have to fear, do find out that she has
visited Ivor Dundas, who has assumed a false name for the pleasure of
a private interview with her, interests of even deeper importance than
the most desperate love affair may still, we'll hope, be guarded by the
pretext of your old friendship. Now, you understand thoroughly?"
"I think so," replied Ivor, very grave and troubled, I knew by the
change in his manner, out of which all the gaiety had been slowly
drained. "I will do my very best."
"If you are sacrificing any important engagements of your own for the
next two days, you won't suffer for it in the end," remarked the Foreign
Secretary meaningly.
No doubt Ivor saw the consulship at Algiers dancing before his eyes,
bound up with an engagement to Di, just as a slice of rich plum cake
and white bride cake are tied together with bows of satin ribbons
sometimes, in America. I didn't want him to have the consulship,
because getting that would perhaps mean getting Di, too.
"Thank you," said Ivor.
"And what hotel shall you choose in Paris?" asked the Foreign
Secretary. "It should be a good one, I don't need to remind you, where
Mademoiselle de Renzie could go without danger of compromising
herself, in case she should be recognised in spite of the veil she's pretty
certain to wear. Yet it shouldn't be in too central a situation."
"Shall it be the Élysèe Palace?" asked Ivor.

"That will do very well," replied the other, after reflecting for an instant.
And I could have clapped my hands, in what Ivor would call my
"impish joy," when it was settled; for the Élysèe Palace is where Lord
and Lady Mountstuart stop when they visit Paris, and they'd been
talking of running over next day with Lord Robert West, to look at a
wonderful new motor car for sale