vacant
easy-chair.

"I shall begin to think," he said, a little querulously, "that you don't
read the newspapers. My secretary, according to that portion of the
Press which guarantees to provide full value for the smallest copper
coin, has 'disappeared'."

"Really?" she exclaimed. "He or she?"

"He--the Honourable Anthony Palliser by name, son of Stobart Palliser,
who was at Eton with me."

She nodded.

"I expect I know his mother. What exactly do you mean by
'disappeared'?"

Tallente was looking out of the window. A slight hardness had crept
into his tone and manner. He had the air of one reciting a story.

"The young man and I differed last Tuesday night," he said. "In the
language of the novelists, he walked out into the night and disappeared.
Only an hour before dinner, too. Nothing has been heard of him since."

"What a fatuous thing to do!" she remarked. "Shall you have to get
another secretary?"

"Presently," he assented. "Just for the moment I am rather enjoying
doing nothing."

She leaned back amongst the cushions of her chair and looked across at
him with interest, an interest which presently drifted into sympathy.
Even the lightness of his tone could not mask the inwritten weariness of
the man, the tired droop of the mouth, and the lacklustre eyes.

"Do you know," she said, "I have never been more intrigued than when I
heard you were really coming down here. Last summer I was in
Scotland--in fact I have been away every time the Manor has been open.
I am so anxious to know whether you like this part of the world."

"I like it so much," he replied, "that I feel like settling here for the
rest of my life."

She shook her head.

"You will never be able to do that," she said, "at least not for many
years. The country will need so much of your time. But it is
delightful to think that you may come here for your holidays."

"If you read the newspapers," he remarked, a little grimly, "you might
not be so sure that the country is clamouring for my services."

She waved away his speech with a little gesture of contempt.

"Rubbish! Your defeat at Hellesfield was a matter of political jobbery.
Any one could see through that. Horlock ought never to have sent you
there. He ought to have found you a perfectly safe seat, and of course
he will have to do it."

He shook his head.

"I am not so sure. Horlock resents my defeat almost as though it were a
personal matter. Besides, it is an age of young men