is my friendship, as a
matter of fact."

Mills' face was the very perfection of indifference. But I who was
looking at him, in my innocence, to discover what it all might mean, I
had a notion that it was perhaps a shade too perfect.

"My leave is a farce," Captain Blunt burst out, with a most unexpected
exasperation. "As an officer of Don Carlos, I have no more standing than
a bandit. I ought to have been interned in those filthy old barracks in
Avignon a long time ago. . . Why am I not? Because Dona Rita exists and
for no other reason on earth. Of course it's known that I am about. She
has only to whisper over the wires to the Minister of the Interior, 'Put
that bird in a cage for me,' and the thing would be done without any more
formalities than that. . . Sad world this," he commented in a changed
tone. "Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed to that
sort of thing."

It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh. It was a deep,
pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and altogether free from that
quality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away the secret
hardness of hearts. But neither was it a very joyous laugh.

"But the truth of the matter is that I am '_en mission_,'" continued
Captain Blunt. "I have been instructed to settle some things, to set
other things going, and, by my instructions, Dona Rita is to be the
intermediary for all those objects. And why? Because every bald head in
this Republican Government gets pink at the top whenever her dress
rustles outside the door. They bow with immense deference when the door
opens, but the bow conceals a smirk because of those Venetian days. That
confounded Versoy shoved his nose into that business; he says
accidentally. He saw them together on the Lido and (those writing
fellows are horrible) he wrote what he calls a vignette (I suppose
accidentally, too) under that very title. There was in it a Prince and a
lady and a big dog. He described how the Prince on landing from the
gondola emptied his purse into the hands of a picturesque old beggar,
while the lady, a little way off, stood gazing back at Venice with the
dog romantically stretched at her feet. One of Versoy's beautiful prose
vignettes in a great daily that has a literary column. But some other
papers that didn't care a cent for literature rehashed the mere fact.
And that's the sort of fact that impresses your political man, especially
if the lady is, w