She looked quickly and innocently up. "Father?... Oh, it isn't here! You see the tram's almost as quick to St Briac." "Oh! Then it's at St Briac?" "Yes. In the kitchen." "The kitchen where Coco lives?" "Yes. That one. But, of course, Coco's outside except when it's raining. And he has sung 'Quand je bois mon vin clairet.' He sang it beautifully." "I'm sure he did," I assented grimly.... "Now tell me a little more of what Monsieur Arnaud said when he was so grateful to me for not doing my plain duty." Her eyes were full on mine, with an expression I did not understand. Somehow the pretty scatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose seemed to give the look an added directness. Her lips parted, but not in a smile. "You needn't call him Monsieur Arnaud," she said. "What then?" I asked quickly. "What do you call him, if I may ask?" At her reply the teacup almost dropped from my hand. "That's really what he said I had to tell you this afternoon," she said. "Of course I call him Derry, like you." VII I was hardly ill enough to have a temperature-chart over the head of my bed; had there been one heaven knows how high into the hundreds it must have leaped. I had been prepared for progression, development. Swiftly as things seemed to have advanced, from taking a single bicycle ride with him to keeping a bicycle in his kitchen was after all only a matter of degree. But this, of so totally different a piece, positively stunned me. "Derry!" I echoed stupidly. "Derry what?" "Rose, of course." Then, rushing almost breathlessly to forestall me, "But of course I know it's the most _fr-r-right_-ful secret! I know that only the three of us know. And it's splendid of you, darling Uncle George, to have stuck up for him the way you did! I wouldn't breathe a single word, not if they were to stick knives into me!" Her eyes brimmed with thanks for my loyalty, disloyalty or whatever it was. But what, in God's name, had he been mad enough to tell her? Everything? Had he told her the whole story rather than strangle her on the spot? "Tell me what he said," I moaned in a weak voice. Better know the worst and get it over. "Of course I'm going to. But oh, how could I be so horrid to you about that note! As if you _would_ think that I should peep into a note anyway! You do forgive me, don't you?" "If you're going to tell me tell me quickly," I groaned. So this, if you please, is what came next: