“Good Lord!” gasped Browne nervously.

“—­it would be a great help.  If we can show that you and Mrs.—­er—­Lady Deppingham have queer spells occasionally, it—­”

“Not for all the islands in the world,” cried Lady Deppingham.  “The idea!  Queer spells!  See here, Mr. Britt, if I have any queer spells to speak of, I won’t have them treated publicly.  If Lord Deppingham can afford to overlook them, I daresay I can, also, even though it costs me the inheritance to do so.  Please be good enough to leave me out of the insanity dodge, as you Americans call it.”

“Madam, God alone provides that part of your inheritance—­” began Britt insistently, fearing that he was losing fair ground.

“Then leave it for God to discover.  I’ll not be a party to it.  It’s utter nonsense,” she cried scathingly.

“Rubbish!” asserted Mr. Saunders boldly.

“What?” exclaimed Britt, turning upon Saunders so abruptly that the little man jumped, and immediately began to readjust his necktie.  “What’s that?  Look here; it’s our only hope—­the insanity dodge, I mean.  They’ve got to show in an English court that Skaggs and—­”

“Let them show what they please about Skaggs,” interrupted Bobby Browne, “but, confound you, I can’t have any one saying that I’m subject to fits or spells or whatever you choose to call ’em.  I don’t have ’em, but even if I did, I’d have ’em privately, not for the benefit of the public.”

“Is it necessary to make my husband insane in order to establish the fact that his grandfather was not of sound mind?” queried pretty Mrs. Browne, with her calmest Boston inflection.

“It depends on your husband,” said Britt coolly.  “If he sticks at anything which may help us to break that will, he’s certainly insane.  That’s all I’ve got to say about it.”

“Well, I’m hanged if I’ll pose as an insane man,” roared Browne.

“Mr. Saunders hasn’t asked me to be insane, have you, Mr. Saunders?” asked Lady Agnes in her sweetest, scorn.

“I don’t apprehend—­” began Saunders nervously.

“Saunders,” said Britt, calculatingly and evenly, “next thing we’ll have to begin hunting for insanity in your family.  We haven’t heard anything from you on this little point, Lord Deppingham.”

“I don’t know anything about Mr. Saunders’s family,” said Deppingham stiffly.  Britt looked at him for a moment, puzzled and uncertain.  Then he gave a short, hopeless laugh and said, under his breath: 

“Holy smoke!”

He immediately altered the course of the discussion and harked back to his original declaration that spies abounded in the chateau.  When he finally called the conference adjourned and prepared to depart, he calmly turned to the stenographer.

“Did you get all this down, Miss Pelham?”

“Yes, Mr. Britt.”

“Good!” Then he went away, leaving the quartette unconsciously depressed by the emphasis he placed upon that single word.