“Ah, well,” Charles meditated aloud, shaking the ash from his cheroot into a Japanese tray—­fine antique bronze-work.  “There were big transactions in live-stock even then!  Still, Job or no Job, the man is too much for me.”

“The difficulty is,” I assented, “you never know where to have him.”

“Yes,” Charles mused; “if he were always the same, like Horniman’s tea or a good brand of whisky, it would be easier, of course; you’d stand some chance of spotting him.  But when a man turns up smiling every time in a different disguise, which fits him like a skin, and always apparently with the best credentials, why, hang it all, Sey, there’s no wrestling with him anyhow.”

“Who could have come to us, for example, better vouched,” I acquiesced, “than the Honourable David?”

“Exactly so,” Charles murmured.  “I invited him myself, for my own advantage.  And he arrived with all the prestige of the Glen-Ellachie connection.”

“Or the Professor?” I went on.  “Introduced to us by the leading mineralogist of England.”

I had touched a sore point.  Charles winced and remained silent.

“Then, women again,” he resumed, after a painful pause.  “I must meet in society many charming women.  I can’t everywhere and always be on my guard against every dear soul of them.  Yet the moment I relax my attention for one day—­or even when I don’t relax it—­I am bamboozled and led a dance by that arch Mme. Picardet, or that transparently simple little minx, Mrs. Granton.  She’s the cleverest girl I ever met in my life, that hussy, whatever we’re to call her.  She’s a different person each time; and each time, hang it all, I lose my heart afresh to that different person.”

I glanced round to make sure Amelia was well out of earshot.

“No, Sey,” my respected connection went on, after another long pause, sipping his coffee pensively, “I feel I must be aided in this superhuman task by a professional unraveller of cunning disguises.  I shall go to Marvillier’s to-morrow—­fortunate man, Marvillier—­and ask him to supply me with a really good ’tec, who will stop in the house and keep an eye upon every living soul that comes near me.  He shall scan each nose, each eye, each wig, each whisker.  He shall be my watchful half, my unsleeping self; it shall be his business to suspect all living men, all breathing women.  The Archbishop of Canterbury shall not escape for a moment his watchful regard; he will take care that royal princesses don’t collar the spoons or walk off with the jewel-cases.  He must see possible Colonel Clays in the guard of every train and the parson of every parish; he must detect the off-chance of a Mme. Picardet in every young girl that takes tea with Amelia, every fat old lady that comes to call upon Isabel.  Yes, I have made my mind up.  I shall go to-morrow and secure such a man at once at Marvillier’s.”

“If you please, Sir Charles,” Césarine interposed, pushing her head through the portière, “her ladyship says, will you and Mr. Wentworth remember that she goes out with you both this evening to Lady Carisbrooke’s?”