As the chances of war continued adverse to the Kaiser’s “victorious armies” the occupying government began to show more lenient tendencies. In high quarters a gradual and very subtle softening was dimly perceptible. Belgians guilty of patriotic deeds that formerly would have brought upon them the severest punishment—deeds far more serious than that for which Miss Cavell was shot—were now treated with astonishing tolerance. Penalties even for flagrant acts of espionage and defiance of military regulations were palliated through the mysterious offices of a woman whose power no one understood. French by birth, but the widow of a German officer fallen in battle, this individual—a sweet-looking, _petite_ woman of about thirty, neither remarkable for beauty, force of character, nor personal magnetism, succeeded in having many death-penalties revoked, in liberating a number of civil prisoners and bending the governmental will, so long implacable, as she chose. I made her acquaintance in the little faubourg house where she dwelt with her mother and brother, the latter an artist, both of the same pleasant, rather provincial and unimposing type as herself. Her manners and speech, soft and kindly; her soft, blue, rather childlike eyes suggested no latent power. One instance of her mediation, told me by herself, was that of a man and his daughter condemned to death for espionage. Damning evidence of guilt had been discovered in their possession—drawings and writings containing important information, some of which, it was ascertained, they had smuggled into Holland for the enemy. And although their death-sentence had already been given, the lady of mystery had it changed to imprisonment and a fine. The punishment in another case (that of a Belgian youth caught red-handed attempting to destroy a train conveying German troops) was also altered to a milder form of penalty.