s pallid and preoccupied. We exchanged remarks
about the weather and the duration of the session. Then we fell silent
till Mulross arrived.

He did not look as if he had come from a sickbed. He came in as jaunty
as a boy, limping just a little from his accident. He was greeted by
his colleagues with tender solicitude,--solicitude, I fear, completely
wasted on him.

"Devilish silly thing to do to get run over," he said. "I was in a
brown study when a cab came round a corner. But I don't regret it, you
know. During the last fortnight I have had leisure to go into this
Bosnian Succession business, and I see now that Von Kladow has been
playing one big game of bluff. Very well; it has got to stop. I am
going to prick the bubble before I am many days older."

The Prime Minister looked anxious. "Our policy towards Bosnia has been
one of non-interference. It is not for us, I should have thought, to
read Germany a lesson."

"Oh, come now," Mulross said, slapping--yes, actually slapping--his
leader on the back; "we may drop that nonsense when we are alone. You
know very well that there are limits to our game of non-interference.
If we don't read Germany a lesson, she will read us one--and a damned
long unpleasant one too. The sooner we give up all this milk-blooded,
blue-spectacled, pacificist talk the better. However, you will see
what I have got to say to-morrow in the House."

The Prime Minister's face lengthened. Mulross was not the pillar he
had thought him, but a splintering reed. I saw that he agreed with me
that this was the most dangerous of the lot.

Then Cargill and Vennard came in together. Both looking uncommonly
fit, younger, trimmer, cleaner. Vennard, instead of his sloppy clothes
and shaggy hair, was groomed like a Guardsman; had a large
pearl-and-diamond solitaire in his shirt, and a white waistcoat with
jewelled buttons. He had lost all his self-consciousness, grinned
cheerfully at the others, warmed his hands at the fire, and cursed the
weather. Cargill, too, had lost his sanctimonious look. There was a
bloom of rustic health on his cheek, and a sparkle in his eye, so that
he had the appearance of some rosy Scotch laird of Raeburn's painting.
Both men wore an air of purpose and contentment.

Vennard turned at once on the Prime Minister. "Did you get my letter?"
he asked. "No? Well, you'll find it waiting when you get home. We're
all friends here, so I can tell you its contents.