"So he often says. He's not proud of me as an author. He'd be still less proud of me on the stage. You'll be doing him a real service if you prevent The Key from being produced, and so keep the family name out of the papers in connection with the theatre." 

 "Oh, will I?" Odell echoed. He looked rather blank for a moment; then gathered himself and his black eyebrows together.  "You're mighty intelligent, aren't you?" he sneered. 

 "I've always thought so. I'm glad you agree. But there's no use our rotting on like this. We're wasting time. Will you tell me what Haslemere can possibly have done?" 

 "Yes! What he positively did do!" the man broke out fiercely, then controlled himself and glanced quickly round the room as if looking for someone. But not even Miss Marian Callender had come into the saloon. Both she and her niece must have been dining in their own suite.  "Lord Haslemere wrote a letter to your British Lord Chamberlain, or whatever you call his High Mightiness, and caused him to have my sister's presentation at Court cancelled three days before it should have come off in May last year." 

 "Good heavens!" I exclaimed.  "What an extraordinary thing to do!" 

 "What a monstrous, what a beastly thing to do! A defenceless girl. A beautiful girl. One of the best on earth. It broke her heart—the humiliation of it, and the shock. She wasn't very strong, and she'd been looking forward to making her bow to your Royalties. Lord knows why she should have cared so much. But she did. She loved England. She has English blood in her veins. She had a sort of loyal feeling to your King and Queen. That is what she got for it. She's never been the same since, and I doubt if she ever will be. All her friends knew she was going to be presented—and then she wasn't. The damned story leaked out somehow, and has been going the rounds ever since. That's why, if your play is produced in New York, I shall see it gets what it deserves—or, anyway, what your family deserves." 

 "How do you know Haslemere wrote that letter?" I asked. 

 "My sister got it from a woman who was to present her—a friend of Lord Haslemere's wife. She'd seen the letter." 

 "Then she must have seen some reason alleged." 

 "She did. That to his certain knowledge Miss Madeleine Odell wasn't a proper person to be introduced to their Majesties. Maida not a proper person! She's a 

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