u sure of that, Pen?" he asked. "It doesn't sound like our
people, you know, does it?"

"I am quite sure," she declared confidently. "You are a very youthful
diplomat, Dicky, but even you have probably heard of governments who
employ private messengers to carry despatches which for various reasons
they don't care to put through their embassies."

"Why, that's so, of course, over on this side," he agreed. "These
European nations are up to all manner of tricks. But I tell you frankly,
Pen, I never heard of anything of the sort being done from Washington."

"Perhaps not," she answered composedly. "You see, things have developed
with us during the last twenty-five years. The old America had only
one foreign policy, and that was to hold inviolate the Monroe doctrine.
European or Asiatic complications scarcely even interested her. Those
times have passed, Dicky. Cuba and the Philippines were the start of
other things. We are being drawn into the maelstrom. In another ten
years we shall be there, whether we want to be or not."

The young man was deeply interested.

"Well," he admitted, "there's a good deal in what you say, Penelope. You
talk about it all as though you were a diplomat yourself."

"Perhaps I am," she answered calmly. "A stray young woman like myself
must have something to occupy her thoughts, you know."

He laughed.

"That's not bad," he asserted, "for a girl whom the New York Herald
declared, a few weeks ago, to be one of the most brilliant young women
in English society."

She shrugged her shoulders scornfully.

"That's just the sort of thing the New York Herald would say," she
remarked. "You see, I have to get a reputation for being smart and
saying bright things, or nobody would ask me anywhere. Penniless
American young women are not too popular over here."

"Marry me, then," he suggested amiably. "I shall have plenty of money
some day."

"I'll see about it when you're grown up," she answered. "Just at
present, I think we'd better return to the subject of Hamilton Fynes."

Mr. Richard Vanderpole sighed, but seemed not disinclined to follow her
suggestion.

"Harvey is a silent man, as you know," he said thoughtfully, "and he
keeps everything of importance to himself. At the same time these little
matters get about in the shop, of course, and I have never heard of any
despatches being brought across from Washington except in the usual way.
Presuming that you are right," he added after a moment