by you, and cashed at my banker’s, as a hostage, so to speak, for your future good behaviour.  If ever you recognise me, and betray me to that solemn old ass, your employer, remember, I expose it, and you with it to him.  So now we understand each other.  I had not thought of this little dodge; it was you who suggested it.  However, I jumped at it.  Was it not well worth my while paying you that slight commission in return for a guarantee of your future silence?  Your mouth is now closed.  And cheap too at the price.—­Yours, dear Comrade, in the great confraternity of rogues,

“CUTHBERT CLAY, Colonel.”

Charles laid his note down, and grizzled.  “What’s yours, Sey?” he asked.

“From a lady,” I answered.

He gazed at me suspiciously.  “Oh, I thought it was the same hand,” he said.  His eye looked through me.

“No,” I answered.  “Mrs. Mortimer’s.”  But I confess I trembled.

He paused a moment.  “You made all inquiries at this fellow’s bank?” he went on, after a deep sigh.

“Oh, yes,” I put in quickly. (I had taken good care about that, you may be sure, lest he should spot the commission.) “They say the self-styled Count von Lebenstein was introduced to them by the Southampton Row folks, and drew, as usual, on the Lebenstein account:  so they were quite unsuspicious.  A rascal who goes about the world on that scale, you know, and arrives with such credentials as theirs and yours, naturally imposes on anybody.  The bank didn’t even require to have him formally identified.  The firm was enough.  He came to pay money in, not to draw it out.  And he withdrew his balance just two days later, saying he was in a hurry to get back to Vienna.”

Would he ask for items?  I confess I felt it was an awkward moment.  Charles, however, was too full of regrets to bother about the account.  He leaned back in his easy chair, stuck his hands in his pockets, held his legs straight out on the fender before him, and looked the very picture of hopeless despondency.

“Sey,” he began, after a minute or two, poking the fire, reflectively, “what a genius that man has!  ’Pon my soul, I admire him.  I sometimes wish—­” He broke off and hesitated.

“Yes, Charles?” I answered.

“I sometimes wish ... we had got him on the Board of the Cloetedorp Golcondas.  Mag—­nificent combinations he would make in the City!”

I rose from my seat and stared solemnly at my misguided brother-in-law.

“Charles,” I said, “you are beside yourself.  Too much Colonel Clay has told upon your clear and splendid intellect.  There are certain remarks which, however true they may be, no self-respecting financier should permit himself to make, even in the privacy of his own room, to his most intimate friend and trusted adviser.”

Charles fairly broke down.  “You are right, Sey,” he sobbed out.  “Quite right.  Forgive this outburst.  At moments of emotion the truth will sometimes out, in spite of everything.”