aid.
"I have heard him spout Socialism, and I know he has written about
revolutions, but, believe me, he's a good old-fashioned Whig at heart.
He'll never carry the red flag. I see your wife has bought the
Maharajaim of Sapong's pearls, Andrew. Do you think she'd leave them to
me if I were to call on her?"

"Why not ask her?" Tallente suggested. "She is over there."

"Dear me, so she is!" she exclaimed. "How smart, too! I thought when
she came in she must be some one not quite respectable, she was so
well-dressed. Going, Andrew? Well, come and see me before you return
to the country. And I wouldn't go and have tea with that little hussy,
if I were you. She'll burn the good old-fashioned principles out of
you, if anything could."

"Not later than five, please," Nora called out. "You shall have
muffins, if I can get them."

"She's got her eye on you," the old lady chuckled. "Most dangerous
child in London, they all tell me. You're warned, Andrew."

He smiled as he raised her fingers to his lips.

"Is my danger political or otherwise?" he whispered.

"Otherwise, I should think," was the prompt retort. "You are too
British to change our politics, but thank goodness infidelity is one of
the cosmopolitan virtues. You were never the man to marry a
plaster-cast type of wife, Andrew, for all her millions. I could have
done better for you than that. What's this they are telling me about
Tony Palliser?"

Tallente stiffened a little.

"A good many people seem to be talking about Tony Palliser," he
observed.

"You shouldn't have let your wife make such an idiot of herself with
him--lunching and dining and theatring all the time. And now they say
he has disappeared. Poor little man! What have you done to him,
Andrew?"

Tallente sighed.

"I can see that I shall have to take you into my confidence," he
murmured.

"You needn't tell me a single word, because I shouldn't believe you if
you did. Are you staying here with your wife?"

"No," Tallente answered. "I am back at my old rooms in Charges Street."

The old lady patted him on the arm and dismissed him.

"You see, I've found out all I wanted to know!" she chuckled.

CHAPTER XII

Dartrey had been called unexpectedly to the north, to a great Labour
conference, and Tallente, waiting for his return, promised within the
next forty-eight hours, found himself rather at a loose end. He avoided
the club, where he would have been likely to meet his late political
a