Angela passed on the arm of the Ambassador.  She waved her hand gaily to us, but her companion drew her firmly away.  We both looked after her admiringly.

“Guy,” Lord Chelsford said, “we have both of us done some good work in our time, but never anything better than the way we managed to hoodwink everybody—­even herself, about her father.  Amongst the middle classes he remains a canonized saint, the man who pauperized himself for their sakes.  Ray was too full of Blenavon’s little aberrations to suspect any one else, and our friends from across the water who might—­I mean the woman—­have been inclined for a little blackmail, were obliging enough to make a final disappearance in the unlucky Henriette.  The woman was saved, though, by-the-bye.”

“The woman is still alive,” I told him, “but I will answer for her silence.  I allow her a small pension—­all she would accept.  She is living in the south of France somewhere.”

“And Blenavon,” Lord Chelsford said, with a smile, “has married an American girl who has made a different man of him.  What character those women have!  She hasn’t a penny, they tell me, until her father dies, and they work on their ranch from sunrise.  She will be an ornament to our aristocracy when they do come back.”

“They are coming next spring,” I remarked, “if they can do it out of the profits of the ranch—­not unless.  Blenavon has carried out his father’s wishes to the letter, and cut off the entail of everything that was necessary.”

“What a silly ass that novelist was!” Lord Chelsford declared vigorously.

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