"You once said," Sue reminded her, "that there were three things we actually knew that we hadn't connected with this affair. We've tried and tried to think what they were, but somehow we never could seem to strike them. Perhaps you'd better begin with _them_." But the Imp ignored this suggestion. "I suppose it _has_ dawned on you that that picture has some connection with Louis?" she asked. "We've thought of it, but it seemed so impossible that we finally gave up the idea," replied Sue. "What _could_ it possibly have to do with him?" "Everything," answered the Imp briefly. "Go on, then!" commanded Sue. "You've kept us on tenter-hooks long enough. If you're going to tell us at all, do please begin at the beginning, and don't stop till you're through." "The trouble is just this," admitted the Imp. "I don't actually _know_ anything much at all. It's just guesswork, except for one or two things. You seem to think Monsieur has told me the whole business. Well, he hasn't,--not a single thing,--except that I was right about knowing who that portrait was, and he asked me not to say anything about it, especially to Louis. Everything else I've worked out for myself, and it _may_ be all wrong; but somehow I don't think it is." The two listeners looked crestfallen. For some time past they had come to believe that the Imp was wholly and entirely in Monsieur's confidence. It was a shock to learn the truth. Carol immediately intimated as much to the assembled company. "You're a pack of sillies," exclaimed the Imp scornfully, "to imagine such a thing, anyway! Why, this thing is of--of immense importance to--well, I was almost going to say to the whole world. Do you suppose for one moment that a youngster would be let into such an important secret?" "What are you saying? 'To the whole world'?" cried Carol. "Are you going crazy, or do you think you are taking us in again with some of your nonsense?" "I'm _not_ talking nonsense, and I'll prove it. Do you know what I discovered by reading a little more than you did at the library, and also from an old book that Miss Hastings lent me, because I told her I was interested in the subject? Well, I found out that, although most people think it's a settled fact that that poor little dauphin died in prison, still there are a lot of legends that he really escaped, that he was helped to escape by some of the Royalists, and that the little boy who died there wasn't the dauphin at all!" The Imp stopped to let this startling news sink into the minds of her hearers. "But--but--" stammered Sue, "if he escaped, what became of him?"