style="font-size:15px;"> "I saw her once," observed Sir Thorald.
"You generally do," added his wife.
"What?"
"See what others don't."
Sir Thorald, a trifle disconcerted, applied himself to caviare and, later, to a bottle of Moselle.
"She's a beauty, they say—" began Ricky, and might have continued had he not caught the danger-signal in Molly Hesketh's black eyes.
"Lorraine de Nesville," said Lady Hesketh, "is only a child of seventeen. Her father makes balloons."
"Not the little, red, squeaky kind," added Sir Thorald; "Molly, he is an amateur aeronaut."
"He'd much better take care of Lorraine. The poor child runs wild all over the country. They say she rides like a witch on a broom—"
"Astride?" cried Sir Thorald.
"For shame!" said his wife; "I—I—upon my word, I have heard that she has done that, too. Ricky! what do you mean by yawning?"
Ricky had been listening, mouth open. He shut it hurriedly and grew pink to the roots of his colourless hair.
Betty Castlemaine looked at Cecil, and Dorothy Marche laughed.
"What of it?" she said; "there is nobody here who would dare to!"
"Oh, shocking!" said little Alixe, and tried to look as though she meant it.
At that moment Sir Thorald caught sight of Jack Marche, strolling up through the trees, gun tucked under his left arm.
"No luncheon, no salad, no champagne-cup, no cigarette!" he called; "all gone! all gone! Molly's smoked my last—"
"Jack Marche, where have you been?" demanded Molly Hesketh. "No, you needn't dodge my accusing finger! Barbara, look at him!"
"It's a pretty finger—if Sir Thorald will permit me to say so," said Jack, laughing and setting his gun up against a tree. "Dorrie, didn't you save any salad? Ricky, you devouring scourge, there's not a bit of caviare! I'm hungry—Oh, thanks, Betty, you did think of the prodigal, didn't you?"
"It was Cecil," she said, slyly; "I was saving it for him. What did you shoot, Jack?"
"Now you people listen and I'll tell you what I didn't shoot."
"A poor little hawk?" asked Betty.
"No—a poor little wolf!"
In the midst of cries of astonishment and exclamations Sir Thorald arose, waving a napkin.
"I knew it!" he said—"I knew I saw a wolf in the woods day before yesterday, but I didn't dare tell Molly; she never believes me."
"And you deliberately chose to expose us to the danger of being eaten alive?" said Lady Hesketh, in an awful voice. "Ricky, I'm going to get into that boat at once; Dorothy—Betty Castlemaine—bring Alixe and Barbara Lisle. We are going to embark at once."
"Ricky and his boat-load of beauty," laughed Sir Thorald. "Really, Molly, I hesitated to tell you because—I was afraid—"
"What, you horrid thing?—afraid he'd bite me?"
"Afraid you'd bite the wolf, my dear," he whispered so that nobody but she heard it; "I say, Ricky, we ought to have a wolf drive! What do you think?"
The subject started, all chimed in with enthusiasm except Alixe von Elster, who sat with big, soulful eyes fixed on Sir Thorald and trembled for that bad young man's precious skin.
"We have two weeks to stay yet," said Cecil, glancing involuntarily at Betty Castlemaine; "we can get up a drive in a week."
"You are not going, Cecil," said Betty, in a low voice, partly to practise controlling him, partly to see him blush.
Lady Hesketh, however, took enough interest in the sport to insist, and Jack Marche promised to see the head-keeper at once.
"I think I see him now," said Sir Thorald—"no, it's Bosquet's boy from the post-office. Those are telegrams he's got."
The little postman's son came trotting across the meadow, waving two blue envelopes.
"Monsieur le Capitaine Rickerl von Elster and Monsieur Jack Marche—two telegrams this instant from Paris, messieurs! I salute you." And he took off his peaked cap, adding, as he saw the others, "Messieurs, mesdames," and nodded his curly, blond head and smiled.
"Don't apologize—read your telegrams!" said Lady Hesketh; "dear me! dear me! if they take you two away and leave Thorald, I shall—I shall yawn!"
Ricky's broad face changed as he read his despatch; and Molly Hesketh, shamelessly peeping over his shoulder, exclaimed, "It's cipher! How stupid! Can you understand it, Ricky?"
Yes, Rickerl von Elster understood it well enough. He paled a little, thrust the crumpled telegram into his pocket, and looked vaguely at the circle of faces. After a moment he said, standing very straight, "I must leave to-morrow morning."
"Recalled? Confound your ambassador, Ricky!" said Sir Thorald. "Recalled to Paris in midsummer! Well, I'm—"
"Not to Paris," said Rickerl, with a curious catch in his voice—"to Berlin. I join my regiment at once."
Jack Marche, who had been studying his telegram with puzzled eyes, held it out to Sir Thorald.
"Can't make head or tail of it; can you?" he demanded.
Sir Thorald took it and read aloud: "New York Herald offers you your own price and all expenses. Cable, if accepted."
"'Cable, if accepted,'" repeated Betty Castlemaine; "accept what?"
"Exactly! What?" said Jack. "Do they want a story? What do 'expenses' mean? I'm not going to Africa again if I know it."
"It sounds as though the Herald wanted you for some expedition; it sounds as if everybody knew about the expedition, except you. Nobody ever hears any news at Morteyn," said Molly Hesketh, dejectedly. "Are you going, Jack?"
"Going? Where?"
"Does your telegram throw any light on Jack's, Ricky?" asked Sir Thorald.
But Rickerl von Elster turned away without answering.
CHAPTER III
SUMMER THUNDER
When the old vicomte was well enough to entertain anybody at all, which was not very often, he did it skilfully. So when he filled the Château with young people and told them to amuse themselves and not bother him, the house-party was necessarily a success.
He himself sat all day in the sunshine, studying the week's Paris newspapers with dim, kindly eyes, or played interminable chess games with his wife on the flower terrace.
She was sixty; he had passed threescore and ten. They never strayed far from each other. It had always been so from the first, and the first was when Helen Bruce, of New York City, married Georges Vicomte de Morteyn. That was long ago.
The chess-table stood
