“I shall always be grateful to you,” he said, smiling into Tess’s eyes with his own wonderful brown ones but talking at the commissioner.  “If I had lost this letter I should have been at a loss indeed.  If some one else had found it, that might have been disastrous.”

“But I did not find it for you,” Tess objected.

Utirupa turned his back to the commissioner and answered in a low voice.

“Nevertheless, when I lose letters I shall come here first!”

He bowed to take his leave and showed the back of the envelope again to Samson, with a quiet malice worthy of Torquemada.  The commissioner looked almost capable of snatching it.

“Mrs. Blaine,” he said with a laugh after the prince had gone, “skill and experience, I am afraid, are not much good without luck.  Luck seems to be a thing I lack.  Now, if I had picked up that letter I’ve a notion that the information in it would have saved me a year’s work.”

Tess was quite sure that Tom had not picked the letter up, but there was no need to betray her knowledge.

“Do you mean you’d have opened a letter you picked up in my garden?” she demanded.

His eyes accepted her challenge.

“Why not?”

“But why?  Surely—­”

“Necessity, dear lady, knows no law.  That’s one of the first axioms of diplomacy.  Consider your husband as a case in point.  Custom, which is the basis of nearly all law, says he ought to be here entertaining your guests.  Necessity, ignoring custom, obliges him to stay in the hills and supervise the blasting, disappointing every one but me.  I’m going to take advantage of his necessity.”

If he had seen the swift glance she gave him he might have changed the course of one small part of history.  Tess knew nothing of the intrigue he was engaged in, and did not propose to be keeper of his secrets; if he had glimpsed that swift betrayal of her feelings he would certainly not have volunteered further confidences.  But the poison of ambition blinds all those who drink it, so that the “safest” men unburden themselves to the wrong unwilling ears.

“Walk with me up and down the path where every one can see us, won’t you?”

“Why?” she laughed.  “Do you flatter yourself I’d be afraid to be caught alone with you?”

“I hope you’d like to be alone with me!  I would like nothing better.  But if we walk up and down together on the path in full view, we arouse no suspicion and we can’t be overheard.  I propose to tell some secrets.”

Not many women would resist the temptation of inside political information.  Recognizing that by some means beyond her comprehension she was being drawn into a maze of secrets all interrelated and any of them likely to involve herself at any minute, Tess had no compunction whatever.

“I’ll be frank with you,” she said.  “I’m curious.”