"A friend," replied the Grand Duchess, "the Grand Duke's faithful companion. The same man who saved his life twice in the Congo. The same who stayed with him to the end, and rendered him the last services, though he was unable to save him from the fell malady." "What was his name?" I asked. "Baron Ulrich von Boose." "Boose!" I cried. "So it was Boose!" The Grand Duchess turned rather pale and drew herself up to her full height. Melusine, at her feet, had stopped playing the guitar, which was lying on the floor. "What do you mean, monsieur?" said Aurora of Lautenburg. "Please explain yourself." I had already recovered myself somewhat, and was vaguely conscious of my stupidity. I wanted to turn the conversation, but the Grand Duchess was not to be put off. "Do you know Baron von Boose?" "Excuse me, madame," I stammered. "I don't really know whether I ought, whether I can ..." "What oughtn't you to say? What can't you say?" I cursed my clumsy and premature exclamation, which looked like compromising in one second two months of patient approach. Thoroughly alarmed, and grasping at a straw, my eyes fastened on Melusine. The Grand Duchess seemed to doubt the meaning of that look. "Monsieur," she said, "Fräulein von Graffenfried is my friend, and you must know that I have no secrets from those I have once called by that name. You can speak freely before her. Indeed, I ask you to." There was only one way out of the impasse. Stammering in the approved manner of those with nothing definite to say, I told her as well as I could about my conversation with Professor Thierry in the course of which I had first heard the name of Baron von Boose. Aurora of Lautenburg's forehead showed a wrinkle. "I understand," she murmured at length, "or, rather, I think I understand, in spite of the intentional reservations in your story." She reflected a moment, then recovered her wonted calm and said: "This proves, monsieur, how much one should distrust hasty conclusions. I do not know where your Professor Thierry went for the story with which he has stuffed your head. If, as you say, he is a conscientious historian, I think he would have acted less precipitately if he had been in possession of this--and this." She handed me the letter I had just seen and with it another. "These," she explained, "are two of the last letters written to me from the Congo by the Grand Duke Rudolph. In the first he tells me how he was saved by Ulrich von Boose from a buffalo which had killed his horse; in the second, how this same Boose rescued him from five or six natives who would have given him a bad time." She looked at me with a smile while I read the passages she indicated. I bowed, feeling somewhat sheepish. Melusine had just filled the cups and we drank some very strong tea, in which pieces of citron-peel floated. Then I kissed the Grand Duchess's hand and clasped Melusine's. "Au revoir till tomorrow, _ami_," said Aurora.