"Any confidence madame may honour me with shall be deeply respected. Meanwhile, I have perceived that madame knows or suspects that I am not what I seem to be. So be it. I am in her hands and I do not fear. Let her tell me what she believes me to be and, if she has judged aright, I will answer truly. A frank admission can harm me no more than suspicion can do." "I shall not harm you," the Comtesse said. "I have not forgotten your succour when those boors had attacked me." Then, glancing round to observe whether the servants were out of earshot, as was, indeed, the case, since they had gone some little distance ahead of the coach the better to gaze upon the troops environing the city, as well as on the city itself, she said: "You are, as I have said, an Englishman." "Yes," Bevill replied calmly, fearing nothing from this avowal which, made to any other French subject, would have been fraught with destruction to him. "I am an Englishman." [Illustration: "Liége was before them."--_p_. 363.] "A soldier, doubtless, endeavouring to make his way to his own forces." "No; I am no soldier--now. I have been one. But my mission is far different from that. I go, if it may be so, to escort a young countrywoman of mine out of Liége, and to take her back in safety to England." "Alas! you will never succeed. That she may be permitted to leave Liége is possible, though by no means probable. Those in the city who are not French will scarcely obtain permission to depart, since they would be able to convey far too much intelligence to the enemy of what prevails within. While as for you----" "Yes, madame?" Bevill said, still speaking quite calmly. "You may very well stay in Liége unharmed since no Walloon would betray you to his conquerors, and the French troops are in the citadel, the Chartreuse, at the gates, and elsewhere. But you will never get out with your charge." "Not as a Frenchman?" "No. Not with an Englishwoman. That is, unless she can transform herself into a Frenchwoman as easily as you have transformed yourself into a Frenchman." "Yet you have discovered me to be none." "I discovered you by some of your expressions, the turn of your phrases, simply because--and this may astonish you--your French was too good. You used some phrases that were those of a scholar and not the idiom of daily life. It is often so." Then, with almost a smile on the face that was generally so preternaturally grave, the Comtesse de Valorme said: "Captain Le Blond, as you call yourself, would you discover that I am a Frenchwoman?" And to Bevill's astonishment she spoke these words in perfect English--so perfect, indeed, that they might have issued from the lips of one of his own countrywomen.