lkiness, as he threw himself into a chair and looked with distaste at
the newspaper he had taken up.

Sir Wilfrid surveyed him.

"We meet to-night?" he said, presently.

"You mean in Heribert Street? I suppose so," said Montresor, without
cordiality.

"I have just got a letter from her ladyship."

"Well, I hope it is more agreeable than those she writes to me. A more
unreasonable old woman--"

The tired Minister took up _Punch_, looked at a page, and flung it down
again. Then he said:

"Are you going?"

"I don't know. Lady Henry gives me leave, which makes me feel myself a
kind of spy."

"Oh, never mind. Come along. Mademoiselle Julie will want all our
support. I don't hear her as kindly spoken of just now as I
should wish."

"No. Lady Henry has more personal hold than we thought."

"And Mademoiselle Julie less tact. Why, in the name of goodness, does
she go and get herself talked about with the particular man who is
engaged to her little cousin? You know, by-the-way, that the story of
her parentage is leaking out fast? Most people seem to know something
about it."

"Well, that was bound to come. Will it do her good or harm?"

"Harm, for the present. A few people are straitlaced, and a good many
feel they have been taken in. But, anyway, this flirtation is
a mistake."

"Nobody really knows whether the man is engaged to the Moffatt girl or
no. The guardians have forbidden it."

"At any rate, everybody is kind enough to say so. It's a blunder on
Mademoiselle Julie's part. As to the man himself, of course, there is
nothing to say. He is a very clever fellow." Montresor looked at his
companion with a sudden stiffness, as though defying contradiction. "He
will do this piece of work that we have given him to do extremely well."

"The Mokembe mission?"

Montresor nodded.

"He had very considerable claims, and was appointed entirely on his
military record. All the tales as to Mademoiselle's influence--with me,
for instance--that Lady Henry has been putting into circulation are
either absurd fiction or have only the very smallest foundation
in fact."

Sir Wilfrid smiled amicably and diverted the conversation.

"Warkworth starts at once?"

"He goes to Paris to-morrow. I recommended him to see Pattison, the
Military Secretary there, who was in the expedition of five years back."

* * * * *

"This hasn't gone as well as it ought," said Dr. Meredith, in the ear of
the D