“Confound him!” I thought savagely. “We could have spared him perfectly. What business has he turning up at the eleventh hour? He didn’t cross the ocean with her. He didn’t suspect her unforgivably. He didn’t help her, and disguise himself as a chauffeur for her, and wing Schwartzmann, and bruise up the other chaps and send them rolling in a heap. This is my adventure. He must have had a hundred. Why couldn’t he stick to his high-flying and dazzling and let me alone?” The murmur of voices drifted from the lord’s bedchamber. I could guess what they had to say to each other, Miss Falconer and her duke. The Firefly of France! Even I, a benighted foreigner, knew the things that title stood for: heroism, in a land where every soldier was a hero; praise and medals and glory; thirty conquered aeroplanes--a record over which his ancestors, those old marshals and constables lying effigied on their tombs of marble with their feet resting on carved lions, must nod their heads with pride. “Mr. Bayne!” It was Miss Falconer’s voice. I rose reluctantly and obeyed the summons. The Firefly was sitting propped on the chest, white, but steadier, while Esme still knelt beside him, holding his hand in hers. “I have been telling Jean, Mr. Bayne, how you have helped us.” The radiance of her face, the lilt of her voice, stabbed me with a jealous pang. I wanted to see her happy, Heaven knew, but not quite in this manner. “And he wants to thank you for all that you have done.” The Duke of Raincy-la-Tour spoke to me in English that was correct, but quaintly formal, of a decided charm. “Monsieur,” he said, “I offer you my gratitude. And if you will touch the hand of one concerning whom, I fear, very evil things are believed--” I forced a smile and a hearty pressure. “I’ll risk it,” I assured him. “The chain of evidence against you seemed far-fetched to say the least. They pointed out accusingly that your father and your grandfather had been royalists, and that therefore--” He made a gesture. “May their souls find repose! Monsieur, it is true that they were. But if they lived to-day, my father and grandfather, they would not be traitors. They would wear, like me, the uniform of France.” He smiled, and I knew once for all that I could never hate him; that mere envy and a shame of it were the worst that I could feel. Everything about him won me, his simplicity, his fine pride, his clearness of eye and voice, his look of a swift, polished sword blade. I had never seen a man like him. The Duchess of Raincy-la-Tour would be a lucky woman; so much was plain.