Upset. Apple-cart. Yes? You follow? No? The Ministry have
been--what do you say?--put through it. Expelled. Broken up. No more
ministry. New ministry wanted. To conciliate royalist party, that is
the cry. So deputation of leading persons, mighty good chaps, prominent
merchants and that sort of bounder, call upon us. They offer me to be
President. See? No? Yes? That's right. I am ambitious blighter, Senor
Bleke. What about it, no? I accept. I am new President of Paranoya. So
no need for your kind assistance. Royalist revolution up the spout. No
more royalist revolution."

The wave of relief which swept over Roland ebbed sufficiently after an
interval to enable him to think of some one but himself. He was not fond
of Maraquita, but he had a tender heart, and this, he felt, would kill
the poor girl.

"But Maraquita----?"

"That's all right, splendid old chap. No need to worry about Maraquita,
stout old boy. Where the husband goes, so does the wife go. As you say,
whither thou goes will I follow. No?"

"But I don't understand. Maraquita is not your wife?"

"Why, certainly, good old heart. What else?"

"Have you been married to her all the time?"

"Why, certainly, good, dear boy."

The room swam before Roland's eyes. There was no room in his mind
for meditations on the perfidy of woman. He groped forward and found
Bombito's hand.

"By Jove," he said thickly, as he wrung it again and again, "I knew you
were a good sort the first time I saw you. Have a drink or something.
Have a cigar or something. Have something, anyway, and sit down and tell
me all about it."

THE EPISODE OF THE HIRED PAST

Final Story of the Series [First published in _Pictorial Review_,
October 1916]

"What do you mean--you can't marry him after all? After all what? Why
can't you marry him? You are perfectly childish."

Lord Evenwood's gentle voice, which had in its time lulled the House
of Peers to slumber more often than any voice ever heard in the
Gilded Chamber, had in it a note of unwonted, but quite justifiable,
irritation. If there was one thing more than another that Lord Evenwood
disliked, it was any interference with arrangements already made.

"The man," he continued, "is not unsightly. The man is not conspicuously
vulgar. The man does not eat peas with his knife. The man pronounces his
aitches with meticulous care and accuracy. The man, moreover, is worth
rather more than a quarter of a million pounds. I repeat, you