’You ask the question as a family matter?  I reply with alacrity, to the best of my ability:  and with my hand on my heart, Mr. Beltham, let me assure you, I very heartily desire the information to be furnished to me.  Or rather—­why should I conceal it?  The sources are irregular, but a child could toddle its way to them—­you take my indication.  Say that I obtained it from my friends.  My friends, Mr. Beltham, are of the kind requiring squeezing.  Government, as my chum and good comrade, Jorian DeWitt, is fond of saying, is a sponge—­a thing that when you dive deep enough to catch it gives liberal supplies, but will assuredly otherwise reverse the process by acting the part of an absorbent.  I get what I get by force of arms, or I might have perished long since.’

‘Then you don’t know where you got it from, sir?’

‘Technically, you are correct, sir.’

‘A bird didn’t bring it, and you didn’t find it in the belly of a fish.’

’Neither of these prodigies.  They have occurred in books I am bound to believe; they did not happen to me.’

’You swear to me you don’t know the man, woman, or committee, who gave you that sum?’

’I do not know, Mr. Beltham.  In an extraordinary history, extraordinary circumstances!  I have experienced so many that I am surprised at nothing.’

‘You suppose you got it from some fool?’

‘Oh! if you choose to indict Government collectively?’

‘You pretend you got it from Government?’

’I am termed a Pretender by some, Mr. Beltham.  The facts are these:  I promised to refund the money, and I fulfilled the promise.  There you have the only answer I can make to you.  Now to my own affair.  I come to request you to demand the hand of the Princess of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld on behalf of my son Harry, your grandson; and I possess the assurance of the prince, her father, that it will be granted.  Doubtless you, sir, are of as old a blood as the prince himself.  You will acknowledge that the honour brought to the family by an hereditary princess is considerable:  it is something.  I am prepared to accompany you to his Highness, or not, as you please.  It is but a question of dotation, and a selection from one or two monosyllables.’

Janet shook her dress.

The squire replied:  ’We ’ll take that up presently.  I haven’t quite done.  Will you tell me what agent paid you the sum of money?’

’The usual agent—­a solicitor, Mr. Beltham; a gentleman whose business lay amongst the aristocracy; he is defunct; and a very worthy old gentleman he was, with a remarkable store of anecdotes of his patrons, very discreetly told:  for you never heard a name from him.’

‘You took him for an agent of Government, did you? why?’