"It is not true, Madam Whitworth, that--" I was exclaiming when I caught myself in the midst of my own betrayal, just as I was about to be shown into a plot which it was of much value to know. And as my words ceased I stood and trembled before her wickedness. "Do you know, Mr. Robert Carruthers, I do not entirely understand you," she said with a great and beautiful calmness as she lighted a cigarette and looked at me trembling before her. "You are a very bold young cavalier but you have the shrinking nature of--shall I say?--a French--_girl_!" As she spoke those words, which began in sarcasm but ended in a queer uncertain tone of suspicion, as if she had blundered on a reason to soothe her vanity for the recoil of my lips from hers, an ugly gleam shot from under her lowered lashes. "I am the son of the house of Carruthers as well as of Grez and Bye, beautiful Madam, and I cannot endure that you put upon my very good Uncle, the General Carruthers, an unfriendliness to France," I exclaimed with a quickness of my brain that I had not before discovered. "On points of honor I have that sensitiveness that you say to be--be of a woman." "Oh, my darling boy, I didn't mean to hurt you about that absurd old feud of--" And as she spoke the beautiful Madam Patricia rose and came upon me with outstretched arms for another abhorred embrace, which it was to my good fortune to have interrupted. But I had a fear of that suspicion I had seen flashed into her mind even though lulled by my fine assumption of the attitude of a man of honor. "Lovely and beautiful Madam," I made a beginning to say, when-- "Oh, yes, Mr. Carruthers is here, for I have an appointment to call for him," an interruption came in the voice of my Buzz in remonstrance with the black maid of Madam Whitworth in the hall of her house. "Come in, Buzz, dear," called that beautiful Madam Whitworth as in one small instant she changed both her position with arms on my shoulder and her countenance of anger and anxiety. She was a very wise and beautiful and much experienced woman, was that Madam Whitworth, but she had given to me, unlessoned as I was in the art of politics, the fact that I most wanted: that the two papers containing the specifications concerning the mules had been mistranslated by her. "Put a shawl around you, Madam Pat, and come out here to the street a minute to see what is going to happen to the Prince of Carruthers," said my rescuer as he inserted his head into the room for one little minute and beckoned us to follow him. And what did I find out there upon that street? CHAPTER XIII BROTHERS BY BLOODSHED