swer the rest of
my question and let us part."

"Tell me," she asked, with almost insolent irony, "do you believe that
there could ever have been a right person for you?"

"My God, yes!" he answered, with a sudden fire. "I suffer the tortures
of the damned sometimes because I missed my chance! There! I'm telling
you this just so that you shall think a little differently, if you can.
You and I between us have made an infernal mess of things. It was
chiefly my fault. And as regards Palliser--well, I am sorry. Only the
fellow--he may have been lovable to you, but he was a coward and a sneak
to me--and he paid. I am sorry."

She seemed a little dazed.

"You mean to tell me, Andrew," she persisted, "that there is really some
one you care for, care for in the big way--a woman who means as much to
you as your place in Parliament--your ambition?"

"More," he declared vigorously. "There isn't a single thing I have or
ever have had in life which I wouldn't give for the chance--just a
chance--"

"And she cares for you?"

"I think that she would," he answered. "She has been brought up in a
very old-fashioned school. She knows of you."

Stella smiled a little bitterly.

"Well," she said, "I suppose I am a brute, but I am glad to know that
you can suffer. I hope you will suffer; it makes you seem more human
anyhow. But in return for your confidence I will answer the other part
of your question. The man Miller was at the Manor that afternoon.
Palliser confessed to me that he had given him some important document."

"Given him!"

"Well, sold him, then. Tony hadn't got a shilling in the world and he
would never take a halfpenny from me. He had to have money. He told me
about it that night before you came. Miller gave him five thousand
pounds for it--secret service money from one of the branches of his
party. Now you know all about it."

"Yes, I know all about it," Tallente assented, a little bitterly. "You
can take your trip to America without a single regret, Stella. I shall
certainly never be a Cabinet Minister again, much less Prime Minister of
England. Miller can use those papers to my undoing."

She shrugged her shoulders as she turned towards the door.

"You are like the fool," she said, "who tried to build the tower of his
life without cement. All very well for experiments, Andrew, when one is
young and one can rebuild, but you are a little old for that now, aren't
you, and all your brain and all your efforts, a