something more than money now. The Brailsfords of the Daily Comet somehow succeeded in dining at Montford House last week. Montford wants advertisement for that ass of a son of his, Darsingham, who is by way of taking up the New Hibernian question in the House to keep him out of mischief; and so the Hepplethwaites were bound to go one better.”

“They say,” observed Mrs. Hargrave, “that Hepplethwaite and Brailsford were office boys together in a tea warehouse.”

“And,” put in Sir Perrott, “they are now running it neck and neck for a Peerage.”

“Shocking!” Lady Rotherfield groaned.

“Then the Vaux House affair is not to be public property at all?” de Daun asked. So long as he could add it to his dossier the stock of public knowledge might just as well be the poorer by that pungent scandal.

“Won’t it come out, though?” Greetland returned. “I haven’t finished my story. The footman on finding that the news did not appear in the Hepplethwaite rags took it to Brailsford, got fifteen pounds for it this time; and it is going to burst upon a jaded reading public to-morrow morning. They were to have had it to-day, only special-sized type had to be cast, and they were not ready.”

“What is this thrilling announcement which is being prepared for us, Mr. Greetland?”

The tatler looked up with almost a start. The question[31] had been put by Countess Alexia von Rohnburg, their young hostess, who had joined the group, unnoticed by Greetland or his listeners, intent as they were upon the new sensation. The Russian proser had come to a pause in that flow of shallow talk with which diplomatists are wont to disguise their thoughts and to cover the watchful observation of their fellows, and the Countess, who had caught above the suave murmur a word or two in de Daun’s high-pitched voice that had arrested her, had risen and crossed the room. There was nothing in her handsome, animated face, the index of a susceptive mind, that showed more than an almost languid curiosity, as of one who lived in an atmosphere filled with tales concerning the great names of the day, and whose appetite was slightly blunted by the familiar fare. Nevertheless Greetland, the most studiously composed man of his world, looked up with an expression of greater embarrassment than he often permitted himself. And it was de Daun, not he, who answered the question.

[31]

“Mr. Greetland 

 Prev. P 23/219 next