"Oh, I'm not a bit hungry," sighed the agitated Miss Walsh as she turned from the window and sat down next to Olwen at the long table. The _déjeuner_ was as perfectly cooked and served as if no subterranean banquet had been in preparation. "Oh, fancy having to be 'shown' to a host of people! Oh, I can't help feeling almost glad that Gustave's father and mother aren't alive! If they had been, you know, he would have had to ask their consent to marry me, even though he is thirty-eight. Oh, it is such a mercy that Madame didn't want me to sit through the whole of lunch." "Much the best plan!" agreed Mrs. Cartwright from her side of the table. "Oh, yes; I don't appear till they have to drink my health--oh, but I am so nervous! And do you think I look all right in this, Mrs. Cartwright?... honestly?" She wore an expensive new dress of prune-coloured _glacé_ silk, ornamented with a kind of lace bib and with rows and rows of little crimson buttons that fastened nothing. Both Mrs. Cartwright and Olwen fibbed valiantly, and had their reward. The loveliest frock in Paris could not have been more becoming to Agatha Walsh than her flush of pleasure. * * * * * That _déjeuner_ downstairs was supposed to be _intime_ and private; but the distant sounds of it were already becoming audible to the more public part of the hotel. First a soft but thunderous drumming as of applause upon the table-top was heard. Then a skirl of laughter, the piercingness of which, near to, could only be guessed at. Then, booming fragments of a voice that rose above others just as an occasional column of foam spouted higher than those other Biscay rollers on the reef. Then an uninterrupted booming.... Apparently a speech was in progress. An involuntary and smiling silence seemed to fall upon the luncheon parties in the _salle_ above, almost as if they would have felt it impolite to talk through what was going on below. Truly, Miss Walsh was making the hotel one that day--the hotel to which she had only come because of that hat-pin stuck in a guide-book and pricking at random a name on a page! Then suddenly, the door of the _salle à manger_ opened. The blue-and-red apparition of Sergeant Tronchet stood to attention just inside it: darkly flushed, beaming, silent. (It may here be said that none of the visitors ever had known this swarthy well-set-up French soldier anything but silent. All that most of them had ever heard of his voice had been the murmured "Madame ... Mademoiselle ... Messieurs ..." that accompanied his heel-clicking bows. Only Miss Walsh had ever had any conversation with him. But had not this been to some purpose?) "Oh, he's come to fetch me," she exclaimed now in a voice that failed. "Good-bye, Olwen dear," she added, as if she never expected to come back alive. "I shall see you and Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor at tea-time----you are all coming to _my_ tea, aren't you?" she finished appealingly.