“Oh,” said Mademoiselle Julie, with amiable vagueness, “is there anything particular that you suppose he wants?”

“I am not at all in the secret of his ambitions,” said Sir Wilfrid, lifting his shoulders.  “But you and Lady Henry seemed well acquainted with him.”

The straw-colored lashes veered her way.

“I had some talk with him in the Park this morning,” said Julie Le Breton, reflectively.  “He wants me to copy his father’s letters for Lady Henry, and to get her to return the originals as soon as possible.  He feels nervous when they are out of his hands.”

“Hm!” said Sir Wilfrid.

At that moment Lady Henry’s door-bell presented itself.  The vigor with which Sir Wilfrid rang it may, perhaps, have expressed the liveliness of his unspoken scepticism.  He did not for one moment believe that General Warkworth’s letters had been the subject of the conversation he had witnessed that morning in the Park, nor that filial veneration had had anything whatever to say to it.

Julie Le Breton gave him her hand.

“Thank you very much,” she said, gravely and softly.

Sir Wilfrid at the moment before had not meant to press it at all.  But he did press it, aware the while of the most mingled feelings.

“On the contrary, you were very good to allow me this conversation.  Command me at any time if I can be useful to you and Lady Henry.”

Julie Le Breton smiled upon him and was gone.

Sir Wilfrid ran down the steps, chafing at himself.

“She somehow gets round one,” he thought, with a touch of annoyance.  “I wonder whether I made any real impression upon her.  Hm!  Let’s see whether Montresor can throw any more light upon her.  He seemed to be pretty intimate.  Her ‘principles,’ eh?  A dangerous view to take, for a woman of that provenance.”

* * * * *

An hour or two later Sir Wilfrid Bury presented himself in the Montresors’ drawing-room in Eaton Place.  He had come home feeling it essential to impress upon the cabinet a certain line of action with regard to the policy of Russia on the Persian Gulf.  But the first person he perceived on the hearth-rug, basking before the Minister’s ample fire, was Lord Lackington.  The sight of that vivacious countenance, that shock of white hair, that tall form still boasting the spareness and almost the straightness of youth, that unsuspecting complacency, confused his ideas and made him somehow feel the whole world a little topsy-turvy.

Nevertheless, after dinner he got his fifteen minutes of private talk with his host, and conscientiously made use of them.  Then, after an appointment had been settled for a longer conversation on another day, both men felt that they had done their duty, and, as it appeared, the same subject stirred in both their minds.

“Well, and what did you think of Lady Henry?” said Montresor, with a smile, as he lighted another cigarette.