"The Villa Jaumont is out on the road to Nice, on the left. Perhaps if you happen to be there this winter you will call. I shall be most delighted to see you." When presently we were back in the hotel and I had gone to my room, I realized that I had made rather good progress. I had ingratiated myself with her, and she had grown very confidential, inasmuch as I was already able to judge that she rather despised her elderly and parsimonious husband, and that she preferred to lead her own untrammelled life. But what was the real object of my mission? A few days later I received a scribbled note signed "Rudolph" to say that a friend of his, an Italian named Giulio Ansaldi, was arriving at the hotel and would meet me in strictest secrecy. I was to leave my bedroom door unlocked at midnight, when he would enter unannounced. Enclosed was half one of Duperre's visiting-cards torn across in a jagged manner. "Your visitor will present to you the missing half of the enclosed card as credential," he wrote. "If the two pieces fit, then trust him implicitly and act according to his instructions which he will convey from me." I turned over the portion of the torn visiting-card, wondering what fresh instructions I was to receive in such strict secrecy. I thought of Lola and wondered whether she had returned home from a visit she was paying in Devonshire, and whether, by her watchfulness, she had gained any inkling of the nature of this latest plot. Little Lady Lydbrook had now become my constant companion. Her friend, Elsie Wallis, had apparently become on friendly terms with a tall, slim, dark-haired young man who often took her out in his car, while on several occasions Lady Lydbrook had accepted my invitation for an afternoon run and tea somewhere. The one fact that I did not like was that a quiet, middle-aged man seemed always to be watching our movements, for whether we chatted together in the lounge, went out motoring, walking on the promenade, or dancing, he always appeared somewhere in the vicinity. But on the day I received Rayne's note he had paid his bill and left the hotel, a fact by which my mind was much relieved. That day I motored my pretty little friend over to Brighton, where we lunched at the Metropole and arrived back for tea. Her husband, she said, had that morning telegraphed to her from Hamburg regretting that he could not rejoin her at present as he was on his way to Italy. "I suppose all our plans are upset again!" she remarked with a pretty pout, as she sat at my side while we went carefully through the old-world town of Lewes. She had become just a little inquisitive about myself. It seemed that she enjoyed her dances with me. Indeed, she admitted it, but I could discern that she was a good deal puzzled as to my means of livelihood. I had to be very circumspect, yet for the life of me I could not imagine why I had been ordered to carry on what was, after all, a mild flirtation with a very pretty young married lady.