ell, such as she is . . ."

He paused. His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the direction
of the shy dummy; and then he went on with cultivated cynicism.

"So she rushes down here. Overdone, weary, rest for her nerves.
Nonsense. I assure you she has no more nerves than I have."

I don't know how he meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant, he
seemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with the flitting expressions on
his thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown hands
amongst the objects on the table. With some pipe ash amongst a little
spilt wine his forefinger traced a capital R. Then he looked into an
empty glass profoundly. I have a notion that I sat there staring and
listening like a yokel at a play. Mills' pipe was lying quite a foot
away in front of him, empty, cold. Perhaps he had no more tobacco. Mr.
Blunt assumed his dandified air--nervously.

"Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusive
drawing-rooms and also in other places, also exclusive, but where the
gossip takes on another tone. There they are probably saying that she
has got a '_coup de coeur_' for some one. Whereas I think she is utterly
incapable of that sort of thing. That Venetian affair, the beginning of
it and the end of it, was nothing but a _coup de tete_, and all those
activities in which I am involved, as you see (by order of Headquarters,
ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but that, all this connection, all this
intimacy into which I have dropped . . . Not to speak of my mother, who
is delightful, but as irresponsible as one of those crazy princesses that
shock their Royal families. . . "

He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that Mills' eyes seemed to
have grown wider than I had ever seen them before. In that tranquil face
it was a great play of feature. "An intimacy," began Mr. Blunt, with an
extremely refined grimness of tone, "an intimacy with the heiress of Mr.
Allegre on the part of . . . on my part, well, it isn't exactly . . .
it's open . . . well, I leave it to you, what does it look like?"

"Is there anybody looking on?" Mills let fall, gently, through his kindly
lips.

"Not actually, perhaps, at this moment. But I don't need to tell a man
of the world, like you, that such things cannot remain unseen. And that
they are, well, compromising, because of the mere fact of the fortune."

Mills got on his feet, looked for his jacket and after getting into it
made