"Please tell me at once, that you aren't--"

He pointed back to the garden.

"We have come out of the land of confessions. On this side of the gate
I am your uncle's guest, and I mustn't be teased with questions."

"Before you go," she threatened, "I shall take you back into the
rose-garden."

From their wicker chairs drawn under a great cedar tree, Mr. Foley and
Lord Armley, perhaps the most distinguished of his colleagues, watched
the slow approach of the two from the flower gardens. Lord Armley, who
had only arrived during the last half hour, was recovering from a fit of
astonishment. He had just been told of his fellow guest.

"Granted, even, that the man is as dangerous as you say," he remarked,
"it is certainly creating a new precedent for you to bring him into the
bosom of your family. Is it conversion, bribery, or poison that you
have in your thoughts?"

"Influence, if possible," Mr. Foley answered. "Somehow or other, I
have always detected in his writing a vein of common sense."

"What the dickens is common sense!" Lord Armley growled.

"Shall I say a sense of the fitness of things?" the Prime Minister
replied,--"a sense of proportion, perhaps? Notwithstanding his
extraordinary speeches in America, I believe that to some extent Maraton
possesses it. Anyhow, it seemed to me to be worth trying. One couldn't
face the idea of letting him go up north just now without making an
effort."

"Things are really serious there," Lord Armley muttered.

"Worse than any of us know," Mr. Foley agreed. "If you hadn't been
coming here, I should have sent for you last night. The French
Ambassador was with me for an hour after dinner."

"No fresh trouble?"

"It was a general conversation, but his visit had its purpose--a very
definite and threatening purpose, too. I do not blame France. We are
under great obligations to her already. Half her fleet is there to
watch over our possessions. She naturally must be sure of her quid pro
quo. Everywhere, all over the Continent, the idea seems to be spreading
that we are going to be plunged into what really amounts to a civil war.
The coming of Maraton has strengthened the people's belief. A country
without the sinews of movement, a country in which the working classes
laid down their tools, a country whose forges had flickered out and
whose railroad tracks were deserted, would simply be the helpless prey
of any country who cared to pay off old scores."

Lord Armley was lo