It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh.  It was a deep, pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and altogether free from that quality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away the secret hardness of hearts.  But neither was it a very joyous laugh.

“But the truth of the matter is that I am ‘en mission,’” continued Captain Blunt.  “I have been instructed to settle some things, to set other things going, and, by my instructions, Dona Rita is to be the intermediary for all those objects.  And why?  Because every bald head in this Republican Government gets pink at the top whenever her dress rustles outside the door.  They bow with immense deference when the door opens, but the bow conceals a smirk because of those Venetian days.  That confounded Versoy shoved his nose into that business; he says accidentally.  He saw them together on the Lido and (those writing fellows are horrible) he wrote what he calls a vignette (I suppose accidentally, too) under that very title.  There was in it a Prince and a lady and a big dog.  He described how the Prince on landing from the gondola emptied his purse into the hands of a picturesque old beggar, while the lady, a little way off, stood gazing back at Venice with the dog romantically stretched at her feet.  One of Versoy’s beautiful prose vignettes in a great daily that has a literary column.  But some other papers that didn’t care a cent for literature rehashed the mere fact.  And that’s the sort of fact that impresses your political man, especially if the lady is, well, such as she is . . .”

He paused.  His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the direction of the shy dummy; and then he went on with cultivated cynicism.

“So she rushes down here.  Overdone, weary, rest for her nerves.  Nonsense.  I assure you she has no more nerves than I have.”

I don’t know how he meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant, he seemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with the flitting expressions on his thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown hands amongst the objects on the table.  With some pipe ash amongst a little spilt wine his forefinger traced a capital R. Then he looked into an empty glass profoundly.  I have a notion that I sat there staring and listening like a yokel at a play.  Mills’ pipe was lying quite a foot away in front of him, empty, cold.  Perhaps he had no more tobacco.  Mr. Blunt assumed his dandified air—­nervously.

“Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusive drawing-rooms and also in other places, also exclusive, but where the gossip takes on another tone.  There they are probably saying that she has got a ‘coup de coeur’ for some one.  Whereas I think she is utterly incapable of that sort of thing.  That Venetian affair, the beginning of it and the end of it, was nothing but a coup de tete, and all those activities in which I am involved, as you see (by order of Headquarters, ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but that, all this connection, all this intimacy into which I have dropped . . .  Not to speak of my mother, who is delightful, but as irresponsible as one of those crazy princesses that shock their Royal families. . . "