ou scarcely expected to see me here, nor did I either
thirty hours ago, but they telegraphed for me to come at once. I 'm off
for Naples."

"And why to Naples?"

"I 'll tell you, Tony," said he, confidentially; "but remember this is
for yourself alone. These things mustn't get abroad; they are Cabinet
secrets, and not known out of the Privy Council."

"You may trust me," said Tony; and Skeffy went on.

"I 'm to be attached there," said be, solemnly.

"What do you mean by attached?"

"I'm going there officially. They want me at our Legation. Sir George
Home is on leave, and Mecklam is Charge d'Affaires; of course every one
knows what that means."

"But _I_ don't," said Tony, bluntly.

"It means being bullied, being jockeyed, being outmanoeuvred, laughed at
by Brennier, and derided by Caraffa. Mecklam's an ass, Tony, that 's
the fact, and they know it at the Office, and I'm sent out to steer the
ship."

"But what do _you_ know about Naples?"

"I know it just as I know the Ecuador question,--just as I know the
Month of the Danube question,--as I know the slave treaty with Portugal,
and the Sound dues with Denmark, and the right of search, and the
Mosquito frontier, and everything else that is pending throughout the
whole globe. Let me tell you, old fellow, the others--the French, the
Italians, and the Austrians--know me as well as they know Palmerston.
What do you think Walewski told Lady Pancroft the day Cavour went down
to Vichy to see the Emperor? They held a long conversation at a table
where there were writing-materials, and Cavour has an Italian habit of
scribbling all the time he talks, and he kept on scratching with a pen
on a sheet of blotting-paper, and what do you think he wrote?--the one
word, over and over again, Skeff, Skeff,--nothing else. 'Which led us,'
says Walewski, 'to add, Who or what was Skeff? when they told us he was
a young fellow'--these are his own words--'of splendid abilities in the
Foreign Office;' and if there is anything remarkable in Cavour, it is
the way he knows and finds out the coming man."

"But how could he have heard of you?"

"These fellows have their spies everywhere, Tony. Gortchakoff
has a photograph of me, with two words in Russian underneath, that I
got translated, and that mean 'infernally dangerous'--_tanski
serateztrskoff_, infernally dangerous!--over his stove in his study.
You 're behind the scenes now, Tony, and it will be rare fun for you
to watch the new