’There will be an enormous throng of competitors in these conditions—­and with such a prize,’ Merton could not help adding.

‘I reckon the trustees are middling particular.  They’ll weed them out.’

‘Is there any restriction on the nationality of the competitors?’ asked Merton, on whom an idea was dawning.

‘Only members of the English speaking races need apply,’ said Miss McCabe.  ‘Pappa took no stock in Spaniards or Turks.’

‘The voters will be prejudiced in favour of their own fellow citizens?’ asked Merton.  ‘That is only natural.’

‘Trust the people,’ said Miss McCabe.  ’The whole thing is to be kept as dark as a blind coloured person hunting in a dark cellar for a black cat that is not there.’

‘A truly Miltonic illustration,’ said Merton.

’The advertisement for competitors will be carefully worded, so as to attract only young men of science.  The young men are not to be told about me:  the prize is in dollars, “with other advantages to be later specified.”  The varieties found are to be conveyed to a port abroad, not yet named, and shipped for New York in a steamer belonging to the McCabe Trust.’

’Then am I to understand that the conditions affecting your marriage are still an entire secret?’

‘That is so,’ said Miss McCabe, ’and I guess from what the marchioness told me, your reference, that you can keep a secret.’

‘To keep secrets is the very essential of my vocation,’ said Merton.

But this secret, as will be seen, he did not absolutely keep.

‘The arrangements,’ he added, ‘are most judicious.’

’Guess Pappa was ‘cute,’ said Miss McCabe, relapsing into her adopted mannerisms.

‘I think I now understand the case in all its bearings,’ Merton went on.  ’I shall give it my serious consideration.  Perhaps I had better say no more at present, but think over the matter.  You remain in town for the season?’

‘Guess we’ve staked out a claim in Berkeley Square,’ said Miss McCabe, ‘an agreeable location.’  She mentioned the number of the house.

‘Then we are likely to meet now and then,’ said Merton, ’and I trust that I may be permitted to wait on you occasionally.’

Miss McCabe graciously assented; her chaperon, Lady Rathcoffey, was summoned by her from the inner chamber and the society of Miss Blossom, the typewriter; the pair drove away, and Merton was left to his own reflections.

‘I do not know what can be done for her,’ he thought, ’except to see that there is at least one eligible man, a gentleman, among the crowd of competitors, and that he is a likely man to win the beautiful prize.  And that man is Bude, by Jove, if he wants to win it.’