ontinued to address her, in his own mind: "Don't think I haven't
noticed your aspiring nose and your ruthless little lips and your gift
for conspiracy and your wonderful weakness for tears! And don't confuse
me with Mr. Carrel Quire, because we're two quite different people!
You've got to be useful to me." And in a more remote part of his mind,
he continued still further: "You're quite a decent sort of child, only
you've been spoilt. I'll unspoil you. You've taken your first medicine
rather well. I like you, or I shall like you before I've done with you."

Miss Warburton wiped her eyes.

"You understand," Mr. Prohack proceeded aloud, "that you're engaged as
my confidential secretary. And when I say 'confidential' I mean
'confidential' in the fullest sense."

"Oh, quite," Miss Warburton concurred almost passionately.

"And you aren't anybody else's secretary but mine. You may pretend to be
everybody else's secretary, you may pretend as much as you please--it
may even be advisable to do so--but the fact must always remain that you
are mine alone. You have to protect my interests, and let me warn you
that my interests are sometimes very strange, not to say peculiar. Get
well into your head that there are not ten commandments in my service.
There is only one: to watch over my interests, to protect them against
everybody else in the whole world. In return for a living wage, you give
me the most absolute loyalty, a loyalty which sticks at nothing,
nothing, nothing."

"Oh, Mr. Prohack!" replied Mary Warburton, smiling simply. "You needn't
tell me all that. I entirely understand. It's the usual thing for
confidential secretaries, isn't it?"

"And now," Mr. Prohack went on, ignoring her. "This being made perfectly
clear, go into the boudoir--that's the room through there--and bring me
here all the parcels lying about. Our next task is to check the
accuracy of several of the leading tradesmen in the West End."

"I think there are one or two more parcels that have been delivered this
morning, in the hall," said Miss Warburton. "Perhaps I had better fetch
them."

"Perhaps you had."

In a few minutes, Miss Warburton, by dint of opening parcels, had
transformed the bedroom into a composite of the principal men's shops in
Piccadilly and Bond Street. Mr. Prohack recoiled before the chromatic
show and also before the prospect of Eve's views on the show.

"Take everything into the boudoir," said he, "and arrange them under the