nster rose with a
benevolent grin, and looked about him pleasantly. The brandies and soda
had endowed him with irrepressible cheerfulness.

'Well?' Lady Georgina murmured.

'Well, I think I'll leave now, Georgey. You've trumped my ace, yah know.
Nasty trick of White to go and round on a fellah. I don't like the turn
this business is taking. Seems to me, the only way I have left to get
out of it is--to turn Queen's evidence.'

Lady Georgina planted herself firmly against the door. 'Bertie,' she
cried, 'no, you don't--not till we've got what we want out of you!'

He gazed at her blandly. His face broke once more into an imbecile
smile. 'You were always a rough 'un, Georgey. Your hand did sting! Well,
what do you want now? We've each played our cards, and you needn't cut
up rusty over it--especially when you're winning! Hang it all, I wish I
had Higginson heah to tackle you!'

'If you go to see the Treasury people, or the Solicitor-General, or the
Public Prosecutor, or whoever else it may be,' Lady Georgina said,
stoutly, 'Mr. Hayes must go with you. We've trumped your ace, as you
say, and we mean to take advantage of it. And then you must trundle
yourself down to Bow Street afterwards, confess the whole truth, and set
Harold at liberty.'

'Oh, I say now, Georgey! The whole truth! the whole blooming truth!
That's really what I call humiliating a fellah!'

'If you don't, we arrest you this minute--fourteen years' imprisonment!'

'Fourteen yeahs?' He wiped his forehead. 'Oh, I say. How doosid
uncomfortable. I was nevah much good at doing anything by the sweat of
my brow. I ought to have lived in the Garden of Eden. Georgey, you're
hard on a chap when he's down on his luck. It would be confounded cruel
to send me to fourteen yeahs at Portland.'

'You would have sent my husband to it,' I broke in, angrily, confronting
him.

'What? You too, Miss Cayley?-- I mean Mrs. Tillington. Don't look at me
like that. Tigahs aren't in it.'

His jauntiness disarmed us. However wicked he might be, one felt it
would be ridiculous to imprison this schoolboy. A sound flogging and a
month's deprivation of wine and cigarettes was the obvious punishment
designed for him by nature.

'You must go down to the police-court and confess this whole
conspiracy,' Lady Georgina went on after a pause, as sternly as she was
able. 'I prefer, if we can, to save the family--even you, Bertie. But I
can't any longer save the family honour-- I can on