"The Morny affair" was one of those queer financial scandals which have been so rife in Paris during the war. A Frenchman, hitherto of unblemished reputation as a patriot, had suddenly come under suspicion of trafficking with the enemy. Questions and rumours had been flying thickly in the Paris Press, as well as in the Chamber, and it was urgently important that the unfortunate Mr Morny--for I, at least, believed he was being slandered by a group of business rivals and political enemies--should be cleared once and for all of suspicions which were rapidly reducing him to a state of complete prostration. How, later, I succeeded in completely vindicating his character, I hope to tell at some future time--at present a full disclosure of the facts might do untold harm. But Madame Gabrielle, her feminine intuition busily at work, was not to be easily put off. She strongly dissented from my view. "Yesterday," she said, "during Madame Bohman's absence with Engstrom at Brunner, I took Luigi's master-key, and, entering her room, opened her dressing-case and thoroughly searched her papers. It is true I found nothing of interest, save that there were letters from certain friends in London, the addresses of which I have copied. And I found this!" "This" was a blank sheet of notepaper, which she produced, bearing the heading of the Palace Hotel at Lisbon. "You see," she said, "it has been very carefully preserved, for it was enclosed in these two envelopes. I wonder why?" I took the blank paper from her and examined it carefully. I found it to be the ordinary hotel notepaper, exactly similar to that which I myself had used in the hotel writing-room, during my recent visit to the Portuguese capital. "Well," I said, "I don't see how that proves, or even suggests, anything. We know perfectly well that Madame Bohman has been to Lisbon--she herself makes no secret whatever of the fact, and she may very well have brought away by accident a sheet of the hotel notepaper and a couple of envelopes. It is true she seems friendly with both men, and there is undoubtedly some suspicion. But is it sufficient to justify action on our part, or even to give us good reason for staying here and devoting to a very trivial matter valuable time which at the moment we might be spending to much greater advantage in Paris?" Luigi raised his dark eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. It was obvious that he was entirely of my way of thinking, and, though he was willing to do anything to help me and to put a spoke in the wheel of the Hun plotters--for, like all patriotic Italians, he cherished the liveliest hatred for the Austro-Germans--he was no fonder than I am myself of the profitless task of chasing a will-o'-the-wisp. But the merry, go-ahead little Frenchwoman had her suspicions very thoroughly aroused, and I knew well that when this was the case it was not an easy task to allay them.