“If you will only hear me, Lord Penshurst.”

“I have told that scoundrel Melun that I will have no further dealing with him or any of his crew.”

“But I—” urged Westerham.

“Be silent,” cried the Prime Minister in a voice of suppressed fury. “Do you think that you have not heaped sufficient dishonour on my head already? But there is a point beyond which you shall not go. I will not have my house and my daughter degraded in this way.”

It took all Westerham's self-control to master himself now. It cut him like a whip to feel himself regarded as of the same breed as Melun. But he saw it would be utterly useless and would only provoke a scene to argue with the bitter old man. So, making a formal little bow to Lady Kathleen, he left them.

[Pg 76]

[Pg 76]

 CHAPTER VIILADY KATHLEEN'S DOUBTS

LADY KATHLEEN'S DOUBTS

In the outer room he found Melun; he took him by the arm and said very quickly, “Come along, I want to speak to you.”

Melun gave him one almost quizzical look and accompanied him without speaking.

As a matter of fact, he found it rather awkward to say anything at all, and did not attempt to break the silence in which Westerham drove back to the hotel.

Westerham himself was baffled, and yet he had ascertained one thing which was likely to be of infinite use to him. He had discovered that there was, without doubt, a definite connection between the game which Melun was playing and Bagley's attempt to steal Lady Kathleen's diamonds.

That was sufficient for the night.

Still his impatience, or perhaps one had better say his desire, to get at the actual facts prompted him to take Melun into Walter's Hotel and subject him to a close cross-examination.

Melun, however, had recovered from his perturbation of the night before, and, moreover, was apparently intoxicated by the effect of rubbing shoulders with the great ones of the earth at the Prime Minister's reception. Therefore he was in a far less 

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