"Can I go to the Edam Post Office?" he asked. "I shall not be long." But though he asked politely, he was gone almost before permission could be given. He told me all about it when he came back. I had been at the window, and had seen Hugh John and Elizabeth Fortinbras ride off together. For any one who saw them there was but one thing to think. They looked so handsome that any other explanation seemed inadmissible. Only we at home knew different. "Sis," he said, when at last we got out to the gun-room, which father uses occasionally for smoking in, "there never was a girl like Elizabeth Fortinbras!" At this I whistled softly--a habit for which I am always being checked, and as often forgetting. "_And what about Cissy Carter?_" I asked. He looked at me once with a kind of "If-you-have-any-shame-in-thee, girl, prepare-to-shed-it-now" manner, before which I quailed. Then he told me how Elizabeth had ridden out to tell him of the treachery of Meg Linwood. Together they had made out an urgency telegram, had found the post-master, and had dispatched it to Paris that very night. It said: "_Half silver token lost. If sent you by mischievous persons, please return immediately to its owner, Hugh John Picton Smith._" "And that, I think, covers the case--she will understand!" said Elizabeth Fortinbras. But low in her own heart, as she rode up the long steep street to New Erin Villa, she added the rider, "That is, if she is not a goose!" XXIII HONOR THY DAUGHTER! But, alas! Cissy Carter _was_ a goose! In the well-meant telegram she saw only a new machination of the enemy--perhaps even of Elizabeth Fortinbras. And the heart in the Boulevard d'Argenson became, for the moment, sadder than ever. Also Madame asked for an explanation in a tone to which the proud little daughter of Colonel Davenant Carter had been quite unaccustomed. She resented Madame Rolly's interference rather more sharply than wisely. Whereupon she was told that her father would be requested to remove her, if, on the morrow, she was not ready with an explanation, in addition to the apology which Madame, perhaps correctly, considered her due. Now it chanced that Colonel Carter, finding himself with a week-end to spare in London, had crossed the Channel to give himself the treat (and his daughter the surprise) of dropping in upon her unexpectedly. He could not have come more to the purpose so far as that daughter was concerned. Or more malapropos from the point of view of Madame Rolly. As many people know, the good Colonel, once the devoted slave of Sir Toady Lion, was occasionally exceedingly peppery. And when he arrived with his pockets bulging with good things, only to find "his little girl" in tears--and, indeed, brought hastily down from the room in which she had been locked--his military ardor exploded.