happened to be
some relative of his wife--is there any fellow of this kind who doesn't
hate Ericson and dread his coming back to Gloria?'

'No, I suppose not,' Dolores sadly answered. Paulo's Hotel was like
other hotels, a gossiping place, and it is to be feared that Dolores
understood better than Captain Sarrasin supposed, the hasty and
speedily-qualified allusion to the General and the pretty wife.

'Well, you see,' Sarrasin summed up, 'I happen to have been in Gloria,
and know something of what is going on there. I studied the place a
little bit before Ericson had left, and I got to know some people. I am
what would have been called in other days a soldier of fortune, dear
girl, although, Heaven knows! I never made much fortune by my
soldiering--you should just ask my wife! But anyhow, you know, when I
have been in a foreign country where things are disturbed people send to
me and offer me jobs, don't you see? So in that way I found that the
powers that be in Gloria at present'--Sarrasin was fond of good old
phrases like 'the powers that be'--'the powers that be in Gloria have a
terrible dread of Ericson's coming back. I know a lot about it. I can
tell you they follow everything that is going on here. They know
perfectly well how thick he is with Sir Rupert Langley, the Foreign
Secretary, and they fancy that means the support of the English
Government in any attempt to return to Gloria. Of course, we know it
means nothing of the kind, you and I.'

'Of course, of course,' Dolores said. She did not know in the least
whether it did or did not mean the support of the English Government;
for her own part, she would have been rather inclined to believe that it
did. But Captain Sarrasin evidently wanted an answer, and she hastened
to give him the answer which he evidently wanted.

'But _they_ never can understand that,' he added. 'The moment a man
dines with a Secretary of State in London they get it into their absurd
heads that that means the pledging of the whole Army, Navy, and Reserve
Forces of England to any particular cause which the man invited to
dinner may be supposed to represent. Here, in nine cases out of ten, the
man invited to dinner does not exchange one confidential word with the
Secretary of State, and the day but one after the dinner the Secretary
of State has forgotten his very existence.'

'Oh, but is that really so?' Dolores asked, in a somewhat aggrieved tone
of voice. She was disposed to resent t