birth to her adored mother.

She loved Seymour Kennedy. A hundred men had smiled upon her, bent over her little hand, written to her, sent her flowers and presents, and declared to her their undying affection. It is ever so. The popular actress always attracts both fools and fortunes. But Ella, level-headed girl as she was, loved only Seymour, and had accepted the real, whole-hearted and honest kisses which he had imprinted upon her lips. Seymour Kennedy was a gentleman before being an officer, which could not, alas! be said of all the men in the services in war-time.

Ella Drost was no fool, her dead mother had always instilled into her mind that, though born of a German father, yet she was British, an argument which, if discussed legally, would have been upset, because, having, unfortunately, been born in Berlin, she was certainly a subject of the German octopus. At the time of her birth her father had occupied a very important position among professors—half the men in the Fatherland were professors of something or other—yet Drost had been professor of chemistry at the Imperial Arsenal at Spandau—that great impregnable fortress in which the French war indemnity of 1870 had been locked up as the war-chest of golden French louis.

How strange it was! And yet it was not altogether strange. Ella, whose heart—the heart of a true British girl trained at her mother’s knee—had discovered a curious “something” and, aided by her British airman lover, was determined to carry on her observations, at all hazards, to the point of ascertaining the real truth.

England was at war at the battle-front—and she, a mere girl, was at war with the enemy in its midst.

Three-quarters of an hour later Ella—whose comfortable car was waiting outside the dingy little place—had driven her father home, but on the way she expressed her decision to stay with him, as it was late and her French maid, Mariette, had no doubt gone to bed.

As they stood in her father’s large, well-furnished dining-room, Ella drew some lemonade from a siphon and then, declaring that she was sleepy, said she would retire.

“All right, my dear,” replied the old man. “All right. You’ll find your room quite ready for you. I always order that it shall be kept ready for you. Let’s see! You were here a week ago—so the bed will not be damp.”

The girl bent and imprinted a dutiful kiss upon her father’s white brow, but, next instant, set 

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