believe, Mr. Aynesworth! Get me those letters, and I will make you my secretary, find you a seat in Parliament, and anything else in reason that you will!"

Aynesworth rose to his feet. He wished to intimate that, so far as he was concerned, the interview was at an end.

"Your proposition, Mr. Barrington," he said, "is absolutely impossible. In the first place, I have no idea where the letters in question are, and Sir Wingrave is never likely to suffer them to pass into my charge."

"You have opportunities of finding out," Barrington suggested.

"And secondly," Aynesworth continued, ignoring the interruption, "whatever the right or the wrong of this matter may be, I am in receipt of a salary from Sir Wingrave Seton, and I cannot betray his confidence."

Barrington also rose to his feet. He was beginning to recognize the hopelessness of his task.

"This is final, Mr. Aynesworth?" he asked.

"Absolutely!" was the firm reply.

Barrington bowed stiffly, and moved towards the door. On the threshold he paused.

"I trust, Mr. Aynesworth," he said hesitatingly, "that you will not regard this as an ordinary attempt at bribery and corruption. I have simply asked you to aid me in setting right a great injustice."

"It is a subtle distinction, Mr. Barrington," Aynesworth answered, "but I will endeavor to keep in mind your point of view."

Barrington drove straight home, and made his way directly to his study. Now that he was free from his wife's influence, and looked back upon his recent interview, he realized for the first time the folly and indignity of the whole proceedings. He was angry that, a man of common sense, keen witted and farseeing in the ordinary affairs of life, should have placed himself so completely in a false, not to say a humiliating position. And then, just as suddenly, he forgot all about himself, and remembered only her. With a breath of violets, and the delicate rustling of half-lifted skirts, she had come softly into the room, and stood looking at him inquiringly. Her manner seemed to indicate more a good-natured curiosity than real anxiety. She made a little grimace as he shook his head."I have failed," he said shortly. "That young man is a prig!"

"I was afraid," she said, "that he would be obstinate. Men with eyes of that 

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