lness, sir?" said Pollyooly yet more anxiously.

"No; it's a nobleman," said the Honourable John Ruffin with even colder
sternness.

Pollyooly pondered the matter for a few seconds; then she said: "Is
he--is he persecuting her, sir, like Senor Perez did when I was dancing
with her in 'Titania's Awakening'?"

"It ought to be a persecution; but I fear it isn't," said the Honourable
John Ruffin grimly. "I gather from this letter that she is regarding his
attentions, which, I am sure, consist chiefly of fulsome flattery and
uncouth gifts, with positive approbation."

Pollyooly pondered this information also; then she said:

"Is she going to marry him, sir?"

"She is not!" said the Honourable John Ruffin in a tone of the deepest
conviction but rather loudly.

Pollyooly looked at him and waited for further information to throw light
on his manifest disturbance of spirit.

He drummed a tattoo on the bare table with his fingers, frowning the
while; then he said:

"Constancy to the ideal, though perhaps out of place in a man, is alike
woman's privilege and her duty. I should be sorry--indeed I should be
deeply shocked if the Esmeralda were to fail in that duty."

"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly in polite sympathy, though she had not the
slightest notion what he meant.

"Especially since I took such pains to present to her the true ideal--the
English ideal," he went on. "Whereas this Moldo-Wallachian--at least
that's what I gather from this letter--is merely handsome in that cheap
and obvious South-European way--that is to say he has big, black eyes,
probably liquid, and a large, probably flowing, moustache. Therefore I
go to Buda-Pesth."

"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly with the same politeness and in the same
ignorance of his reason for going.

"I shall wire to her to-day--to give her pause--and to-morrow I shall
start." He paused, looking at her thoughtfully for a moment, then went
on: "I should like to take you with me, for I know how helpful you can be
in the matter of these insolent and infatuated foreigners. But
Buda-Pesth is too far away. And the question is what I am going to do
with you while I'm away."

"We can stay here all right, sir--the Lump and me," said Pollyooly
quickly, with a note of surprise in her voice.

Her little brother, Roger, who lived with her in the airy attic above the
Honourable John Ruffin's chambers, had acquired the name of "The Lump"
from his admirable placidity.

"I don't lik