It was an office of good traditions:  highly respectable, very old-fashioned, slow moving, not to say dilatory, but tenacious of its dignity as regards other departments, and obstinately wedded to its own way of conducting the business of the country.

The most prominent personage in the department for some little time before the outbreak of hostilities with Russia, and during the war, was Mr. Rufus Faulks, brother to the Captain Faulks we met on board the Burlington Castle, and also uncle to Stanislas McKay.

Mr. Faulks had entered the office as a lad, and, after long years of patient service, had worked his way up through all the grades to the very top of the permanent staff.  He had no one over him now but the statesman who, for the time being, was responsible for the department in Parliament—­a mere politician, perfectly raw in official routine, who had the good taste and better sense to surrender himself blindly to the guidance of Mr. Faulks.  What could a bird of passage know of the deep mysteries of procedure it took a life-time to learn?

He was the true type and pattern of a Government official.  A prim, plethoric, middle-aged little man; always dressed very carefully; walking on the tips of his toes; speaking precisely, with a priggish, self-satisfied smirk, and giving his opinion, even on the weather, with the air of a man who was secretly better informed than the rest of the world.

He was very punctual in his attendance at the office, passing the threshold of the private house in a side-street near Whitehall, where the department was lodged all by itself, every morning at eleven, and doing the same thing every day at the same time with the most praiseworthy, methodical precision.  His first step was to deposit his umbrella in one corner, his second to hang his hat in another, his third to take an old office-coat out of a bottom drawer in his desk, substituting it for the shiny black frock-coat he invariably wore; then he looked through his letters, selected all of a private and confidential nature, and placing the morning’s Times across his knees deposited himself in an arm-chair near the fire.  He was supposed to be digesting the morning’s correspondence, and no one during this the first half-hour of his attendance would have ventured to intrude upon him unsummoned.

It was with a very black face, therefore, that when thus occupied upon the morning that Mr. Hobson visited Mrs. Wilders he saw his own private messenger enter the room.

“What is it, Lightowlar?  I have forbidden you to disturb me till twelve.”

“Beg pardon, sir; very sorry, sir!” replied the messenger, who had been confidential valet to a Cabinet Minister, and prided himself on the extreme polish of his language and demeanour.  “I am aware that you have intimidated your disapprobation of unseasonable interruption, but—­”

“Well, well! out with it, or take yourself off.”