ss in her, and we were
always short of topics of conversation.

We breakfasted in rather a small room, as rooms went there; my aunt
sitting at the head of the table, with an early morning air of being _en
famille_ that she wore at no other time of day. It was not a matter of
garments, for she was not the woman to wear a _peignoir_; but lay, I
supposed, in her manner, which did not begin to assume frigidity until
several watches of the day had passed.

I handed her Polehampton's bills and explained that I was at a loss to
turn them to account; that I even had only the very haziest of ideas as
to their meaning. Holding the forlorn papers in her hand, she began to
lecture me on the duty of acquiring the rudiments of what she called
"business habits."

"Of course you do not require to master details to any considerable
extent," she said, "but I always have held that it is one of the duties
of a...."

She interrupted herself as my sister came into the room; looked at her,
and then held out the papers in her hand. The things quivered a little;
the hand must have quivered too.

"You are going to Halderschrodt's?" she said, interrogatively. "You
could get him to negotiate these for Etchingham?"

Miss Granger looked at the papers negligently.

"I am going this afternoon," she answered. "Etchingham can come...." She
suddenly turned to me: "So your friend is getting shaky," she said.

"It means that?" I asked. "But I've heard that he has done the same sort
of thing before."

"He must have been shaky before," she said, "but I daresay
Halderschrodt...."

"Oh, it's hardly worth while bothering that personage about such a sum,"
I interrupted. Halderschrodt, in those days, was a name that suggested
no dealings in any sum less than a million.

"My dear Etchingham," my aunt interrupted in a shocked tone, "it is
quite worth his while to oblige us...."

"I didn't know," I said.

That afternoon we drove to Halderschrodt's private office, a
sumptuous--that is the _mot juste_--suite of rooms on the first floor of
the house next to the Duc de Mersch's _Sans Souci_. I sat on a
plush-bottomed gilded chair, whilst my pseudo-sister transacted her
business in an adjoining room--a room exactly corresponding with that
within which de Mersch had lurked whilst the lady was warning me against
him. A clerk came after awhile, carried me off into an enclosure, where
my bill was discounted by another, and then reconducted me to my plush
ch