"Not altogether fully," said his adversary, and again she put her hand into the drawer. "It is blank, for we did not know who might be fired by the idea of rescue--though, to tell the truth, from what the boy said of your relations with him, we began to hope that we might have the pleasure of seeing you. . . . Shall we fill it in?" La Vireville looked at her steadily as she faced him, the embroidery still in one frail, blue-veined hand, mockery round her mouth. It was sheer insanity. He had no right to do it, for he knew his life to be a hundred times more valuable than a child's happiness. He could be very ill-spared in Northern Brittany, in Jersey. . . . And though his real intention was not merely to cross the Channel and deliver himself up as a hostage, but by hook or by crook to get Anne out of France and himself into the bargain, the chances were quite fifty to one against his succeeding, and he knew it. It was just the knowledge that he was acting against all the canons of common sense and perhaps even of duty that decided La Vireville--that, and an intolerable picture of a little boy who had never known an unkind word being "brought up to some useful trade." He nodded. "Yes, if you please." "Angèle, ma chérie," said Mme. de Chaulnes, putting down the embroidery, "you can pen M. le Chevalier's description better than I. Have the goodness, Monsieur, to tell my sister your height and your age; the rest she can see for herself." Mlle Angèle got pen and ink, while La Vireville, not unamused, gave her the required information. Then, looking up at him from time to time as he sat there, she wrote much more, and he knew that such a description of his personal appearance, drawn from the life, must almost inevitably, in the end, be his ruin, for in sitting for his own portrait he was also sitting for that of 'Monsieur Augustin.' And he wondered whether the picture now taking shape under her pen were flattering or the reverse. Some of the Government 'signalements' which he had seen posted up in Brittany were remarkable for their fidelity to detail. . . . At any rate, he was not forced to reveal to this artist, now accumulating unimpeachable material, what other scars he carried besides that, only too obvious, on his cheek. "It will be best, Angèle," said Mme. de Chaulnes as the writer finished, "to put, not Monsieur's name, which for this purpose he might find inconvenient, but 'the person recommended by' and then the cypher signature. It will be best also to fill in the route to be taken, lest a fancy should seize Monsieur Augustin to go by way of Brittany, for example."