at I have this day discontinued the
use of the name Peter Gubbins, by which I was formerly known, and
have assumed in lieu thereof the style and title of Ivor de Courcy
Meadowcroft, by which I desire in future to be known.'

"A month or two later, again I happened to light upon a notice in
the Telegraph that the Prince of Wales had opened a new hospital for
incurables at Middleston, and that the Mayor, Mr. Ivor Meadowcroft, had
received an intimation of Her Majesty's intention of conferring upon him
the honour of knighthood. Now what do you make of it?"

"Putting two and two together," I answered, with my eye on our subject,
"and taking into consideration the lady's face and manner, I should
incline to suspect that she was the daughter of a poor parson, with
the usual large family in inverse proportion to his means. That she
unexpectedly made a good match with a very wealthy manufacturer who had
raised himself; and that she was puffed up accordingly with a sense of
self-importance."

"Exactly. He is a millionaire, or something very like it; and, being an
ambitious girl, as she understands ambition, she got him to stand for
the mayoralty, I don't doubt, in the year when the Prince of Wales was
going to open the Royal Incurables, on purpose to secure him the chance
of a knighthood. Then she said, very reasonably, 'I WON'T be Lady
Gubbins--Sir Peter Gubbins!' There's an aristocratic name for you!--and,
by a stroke of his pen, he straightway dis-Gubbinised himself, and
emerged as Sir Ivor de Courcy Meadowcroft."

"Really, Hilda, you know everything about everybody! And what do you
suppose they're going to India for?"

"Now, you've asked me a hard one. I haven't the faintest notion....
And yet... let me think. How is this for a conjecture? Sir Ivor is
interested in steel rails, I believe, and in railway plant generally.
I'm almost sure I've seen his name in connection with steel rails in
reports of public meetings. There's a new Government railway now being
built on the Nepaul frontier--one of these strategic railways, I think
they call them--it's mentioned in the papers we got at Aden. He MIGHT be
going out for that. We can watch his conversation, and see what part of
India he talks about."

"They don't seem inclined to give us much chance of talking," I
objected.

"No; they are VERY exclusive. But I'm very exclusive, too. And I mean to
give them a touch of my exclusiveness. I venture to predict that, before
we rea