pale of his high rank; provided you did
not bore him, you might always get access to him easily enough--the Duke
used to tell him, too easily.

Therefore, when Ezra Baroni deferentially approached with, "The Most
Noble the Marquis of Rockingham, I think?" the Seraph, instead of
leaving the stranger there discomfited, nodded and paused with his
inconsequent good nature; thinking how much less bosh it would be if
everybody could call him, like his family and his comrades, "Rock."

"That is my name," he answered. "I do not know you. Do you want anything
of me?"

The Seraph had a vivid terror of people who "wanted him," in the
subscription, not the police, sense of the word; and had been the victim
of frauds innumerable.

"I wished," returned Baroni respectfully, but with sufficient
independence to conciliate his auditor, whom he saw at a glance cringing
subservience would disgust, "to have the opportunity of asking your
lordship a very simple question."

The Seraph looked a little bored, a little amused.

"Well, ask it, my good fellow; you have your opportunity!" he said
impatiently, yet good-humored still.

"Then would you, my lord," continued the Jew with his strong
Hebrew-German accent, "be so good as to favor me by saying whether this
signature be your own?"

The Jew held before him a folded paper, so folded that one line only was
visible, across which was dashed in bold characters, "Rockingham."

The Seraph put up his eye-glass, stopped, and took a steadfast look;
then shook his head.

"No; that is not mine; at least, I think not. Never made my R half a
quarter so well in my life."

"Many thanks, my lord," said Baroni quietly. "One question more and we
can substantiate the fact. Did your lordship indorse any bill on the
15th of last month?"

The Seraph looked surprised, and reflected a moment. "No, I didn't," he
said after a pause. "I have done it for men, but not on that day; I was
shooting at Hornsey Wood most of it, if I remember right. Why do you
ask?"

"I will tell you, my lord, if you grant me a private interview."

The Seraph moved away. "Never do that," he said briefly; "private
interviews," thought he, acting on past experience, "with women always
mean proposals, and with men always mean extortion."

Baroni made a quick movement toward him.

"An instant, my lord! This intimately concerns yourself. The steps of an
hotel are surely not the place in which to speak of it?"

"I wish to hear