"

"This is very munificent," remarked Lord Chaldon, after an instant's
self-communion. His tone was extremely gracious, but he displayed none
of the enthusiastic excitement which Thorpe perceived now that he had
looked for. The equanimity of Marquises, who were also ex-Ambassadors,
was evidently a deeper-rooted affair than he had supposed. This elderly
and urbane diplomat took a gift of thirty thousand pounds as he might
have accepted a superior cigar.

A brief pause ensued, and was ended by another remark from the nobleman:
"I thought for the moment of asking your advice--on this question of
selling," he continued. "But it will be put more appropriately, perhaps,
in this way: Let me leave it entirely in your hands. Whatever you do
will be right. I know so little of these things--and you know so much."

Thorpe put out his lips a trifle, and looked away for an instant in
frowning abstraction. "If it were put in that way--I think I should
sell," he said. "It's all right for me to take long chances--it's my
game--but there's no reason why you should risk things. But let me put
it in still another way," he added, with the passing gleam of a new
thought over the dull surface of his eye. "What do you say to our making
the transaction strictly between ourselves? Here are shares to bearer,
in the safe there. I say that two thousand of them are yours: that makes
them yours. I give you my cheque for thirty thousand pounds--here, now,
if you like--and that makes them mine again. The business is finished
and done with--inside this room. Neither of us is to say anything about
it to a soul. Does that meet your views?"

The diplomat pondered the proposition--again with a lengthened
perturbation of the eyelids. "It would be possible to suggest a variety
of objections, if one were of a sophistical turn of mind," he said at
last, smilingly reflective. "Yet I see no really insuperable obstacle
in the path." He thought upon it further, and went on with an enquiring
upward glance directed suddenly at Thorpe: "Is there likely to be any
very unpleasant hubbub in the press--when it is known that the annual
meeting has been postponed?"

Thorpe shook his head with confidence. "No--you need have no fear of
that. The press is all right. It's the talk of the City, I'm told--the
way I've managed the press. It isn't often that a man has all three of
the papers walking the same chalk-line."

The Marquis considered these remarks with a puzzled a