"The next station," said the German guard, squinting in at them from the window under his lifted lantern, "is Trois Fontaines." "What!" exclaimed Guild surprised. "Have we passed the customs?" "The customs? This is a German military train! What business is it of the Grand Duchy where we go or what we do?" He lowered his lantern and turned away along the running-board, muttering: "Customs, indeed! The Grand Duchy had better mind its business--and the Grand Duchess, too!" A few moments later the locomotive whistled a long signal note to the unseen station. "Karen," said Guild quietly, "in a few moments I shall be out of debt to General von Reiter. My life will be my own to do with as I please. That means good-bye." She said with adorable malice: "I thought you were going to rob me first." "I am," he said, smiling. "Then I shall make the crime a very difficult one for you.... So that our--parting--may be deferred." The train had already come to a standstill beside a little red-tiled station. Woods surrounded it; nothing was visible except the lamps on a light station-wagon drawn up to the right of the track. The guard unlocked and opened their compartment. A young man--a mere boy--came up smilingly and lifted his cap: "Mademoiselle Girard? Monsieur Guild? I come from Quellenheim with a carriage. I am Fritz Bergner." He took their luggage and they followed to the covered station-wagon. When they were seated the boy stepped into the front seat, turned his horses, and they trotted away into the darkness of a forest through which ran the widely winding road. Fresh and aromatic with autumn perfume the unbroken woods stretched away on either hand beneath the splendour of the stars. Under little stone bridges streams darkled, hurrying to the valley; a lake glimmered through the trees all lustrous in the starlight. Something--perhaps the beauty of the night, possibly the imminence of his departure, kept them silent during the drive, until, at last, two unlighted gate-posts loomed up to the right and the horses swung through a pair of iron gates and up a driveway full of early fallen leaves. A single light sparkled far at the end of the vista. "Have you ever before been here?" asked Guild. "Once, to a hunt." Presently Guild could see the long, two-storied hunting lodge of timber and stucco construction with its high peaked roof and dormers and a great pair of antlers spreading above the hood of the door. Out of the doorway came a stout, pleasant-eyed, brown-skinned woman who curtsied to them smilingly and welcomed them in German. Everything was ready; they had been expected. There was a fire in the hall and something to eat.