"I can't tell you that," replied his lordship, "but I know who has my number, seventeen. I happened to see her ticket, when she held it up to the light. She is that splendid, dark-eyed creature, standing yonder under the candles." Dick's glance turned idly towards the indicated place. Suddenly he became afire. "My lord," he almost gasped, "be my Good Samaritan once again. Exchange tickets with me, for heaven's sake!" "Why, certainly. That gives me back the uncertainty to which this game entitles me." And the exchange was quickly made. "Seventeen," was called out, and Dick advanced, with beating heart, to meet Catherine. She colored again--was it with pleasure?--as she took his proffered arm. They walked in silence to the supper-room. At supper there was more ease and animation than there had been at dinner. This circumstance favored conversation between Dick and his partner. "I should not have expected to meet you so far from where I saw you last," he began, in a low voice. "Nor I to meet you," she replied, speaking without haste, and with the gravity that characterized her. "Oh, my coming here was a very simple matter. Sent to England as a prisoner, I escaped to France, and there fell in with an English nobleman, whose travels brought him this way. I am his secretary. It is not known I am an American." "My coming here was quite as simple," said she, with a slight smile. "My brother and I came to France to receive a small bequest left by a cousin of my mother's. In Paris we met a distant relation,--one of the ladies of her highness the Landgravine. When she returned to Cassel, she obtained for me a post as lady-in-waiting. French people are in request at the German courts." "And Monsieur Gerard?" "My brother is in the foot-guards." "I should like to see him," said Dick, and added, with special intention, "I suppose he has forgotten me." "Oh, no, monsieur," she replied, quite artlessly; "we have often talked of you. Our gratitude for recovering the portrait, and risking your life to bring it to us--" "'Twas the opportunity of risking it to serve you, that made my life worth having," he said, in a tone little above a whisper. "My brother will be glad to learn that your life was surely saved," she replied, avoiding Dick's glance. "And you, who saved it?" "I, too, of course." The words were nothing, but the slight blush with which she uttered them was eloquent.