agely.

"Do so, do so, by all means, if you like; only let me have my laugh out,
or I shall burst a blood-vessel."

Tony made no reply, but walked up and down the room with his brow bent
and his arms folded.

"And then?" cried Skeff,--"and then? What came next?"

"It is your opinion, then," said Tony, sternly, "that this fellow was a
swindler, and not on the Staff at all?"

"No more than he was my godfather!" cried Darner, wiping his eyes.

"And that the whole was a planned scheme to get hold of the despatches?"

"Of course. Filangieri knows well that we are waiting for important
instructions here. There is not a man calls here who is not duly
reported to him by his secret police."

"And why did n't Sir Joseph think of that when I told him what had
happened? All he said was, 'Be of good cheer, Butler; the world will go
round even after the loss of a despatch-bag.'"

"So like him," said Skeffy; "the levity of that man is the ruin of him.
They all say so at the Office."

"I don't know what they say at the Office; but I can declare that so
perfect a gentleman and so fine a fellow I never met before."

Skeffy turned to the glass over the chimney, smoothed his moustaches,
and pointed their tips most artistically, smiling gracefully at himself,
and seeming to say, "You and I, if we were not too modest, could tell of
some one fully his equal."

"And what's to be done,--what's to come of this?" asked Tony, after a
short silence.

"I 'll have to report you, Master Tony. I 'll have to write home: 'My
Lord,--The messenger Butler arrived here this morning to say that he
confided your Lordship's despatches and private instructions to a
most agreeable gentleman, whose acquaintance he made at St. Jean de
Maurienne; and that the fascinating stranger, having apparently not
mastered their contents up to the present--'"

"Go to the------"

"No, Tony, I shall not; but I think it not at all improbable that such
will be the destination his Lordship will assign assistant-messenger
Butler. The fact is, my boy, your career in our department is ended."

"With all my heart! Except for that fine fellow I saw at Turin, I think
I never met such a set of narrow-minded snobs."

"Tony, Tony," said the other, "when Moses, in the 'Vicar of
Wakefield,'--and I take it he is more familiar to you than the other of
that name,--was 'done' by the speculator in green spectacles, he never
inveighed against those who had unfortunately confided