"Yes--yes. I will confess everything," she exclaimed with an effort. "Surely there is no woman so sad and unhappy in all London as I am at this moment--as I have been these past two years! It commenced long ago, but I'll relate it all as clearly and briefly as I can. You know how, in order to finish my education, I was sent to Madame Perrin's at Versailles. Well, on one of my journeys home for the summer holiday I met in the train between the Gare du Nord and Calais an extremely agreeable young Englishman, resident in Paris, who spoke to me, and afterwards gave me his card, expressing a hope that when I returned to Versailles I should manage to meet him again. A sweetheart in secret is always an attraction to the schoolgirl, and surely I was no exception. With the connivance of three other girls, whom I let into my secret, I contrived to meet him often in the narrow, unfrequented Allee des Sabotiers that runs down to La Croix, and wrote him letters of girlish affection. This continued for nearly a year, when one evening, about a month before I left Madame Perrin's for ever, I met him for a few moments close behind the school in the Rue du Parc de Clagny, and he surprised me by remarking that my uncle was Vice-Admiral Hellard, a high official at the Admiralty in London, or Second Sea-Lord as he was called, I believe. He asked me to do him a great favour when I returned to London, and take a little present of a dozen Bohemian liqueur glasses to deliver into his, the Admiral's hand, personally. This I, of course, consented to do, and a few weeks later I found him at the Gare du Nord on my departure. Calling me aside, he handed me a little box about a foot long, and six inches deep, whispering that probably the Admiral would acknowledge the receipt of the gift, and therefore he would be in London a week later, meet me, and receive my uncle's reply. But he urged me to give the present into the hands of no person other than the Admiral himself. He was most particular on that point.