The conversation was desultory, as is mostly the case at dinners, and not till the champagne had been passed for the second time did it become general, then it turned upon racing.
"You were at Ascot, I suppose?" asked Miss Fitzgerald of Madame Darcy.
"Oh, yes," she replied, "They are very amusing – your English races."
She spoke with just the slightest shade of foreign intonation, which rendered her speech charming. "I was on half a coach with four horses."
"What became of the other half?" queried the Lieutenant.
"That is not what you call it – it is not a pull – ?" she ventured, a little shy at their evident amusement.
"Perhaps you mean a drag," suggested Stanley, coming to the rescue.
"Yes, that is it," she laughed, a bewitching little laugh, clear as a bell, adding, "I knew it was something it did not do."
"I always go in the Royal Enclosure," murmured Miss Fitzgerald languidly, turning her gaze on the Secretary, while she toyed with the course then before her. "It's beastly dull, but then one must do the correct thing."
It was a very simple game she was playing – quite pathetic in its simplicity – but dangerous in the presence of Lady Isabelle, in whose veins a little of the dragon blood certainly ran, as well as a great deal that was blue, and Miss Fitzgerald's assumption was a gage of battle not to be disregarded.
"Really. I gave up the Enclosure several years ago. It is getting so common nowadays," said her Ladyship, growing a degree more frigid while the Irish girl flushed.
"Perhaps Miss Fitzgerald enjoyed a run of luck to compensate her for the assemblage?" suggested Kent-Lauriston drily.
"No," responded that young lady. "I came a beastly cropper."
"That was too bad for you," he replied.
"Or somebody else," suggested the Lieutenant, and amidst a burst of laughter Miss Fitzgerald regained her good humour.
"Possibly our host had better luck," ventured Kent-Lauriston.
"Oh, His Diplomacy never bets," laughed Miss Fitzgerald. "He is much too busy hatching plots at the Legation."
"I protest!" cried that gentleman. "Don't you believe them, Madame Darcy. I'm entirely harmless."
"Yes?" she said. "I thought one must never believe a diplomat."
"Oh, at the present day, and in a country like England, our duties are very prosaic."
"Come now, confess," cried Miss Fitzgerald, laughing. "Haven't you some delightfully mysterious intrigue on hand, that you either spend your days in concealing from your brother diplomats, or are dying to find out, as the case may be?"
"I'm sorry to disappoint you," he replied gravely, "but my duties and tastes are not in the least romantic."
"At least, not in the direction of diplomacy," murmured the Lieutenant, giving the waiter a directive glance towards his empty champagne glass.
"You have a beautiful country, Miss Fitzgerald," came the soft voice of Madame Darcy, who had heard the aside, and was sorry for the young girl at whom it was directed.
"Oh, Ireland, you mean. Yes, I love it."
"We are mostly Irish here," laughed Lieutenant Kingsland. "One of my ancestors carried a blackthorn, and Miss Belle Fitzgerald."
"Belle Fitzgerald!" she said, starting and looking keenly at the Irish girl, who turned towards her as her name was mentioned, "are you the Belle Fitzgerald who knows my husband, Colonel Darcy – so – well – "
"Your husband?" she said slowly, looking Madame Darcy straight in the face. "Your husband? No, I have never met your husband. I do not know him."
Lieutenant Kingsland, seeing the attention of the company diverted from his direction, half closed his eyes, and softly drew in his breath. Just then the orchestra made an hejira to the drawing-room, and the little party hastened to follow in its footsteps, in search of more music, liqueurs, coffee, cigarettes, and the most comfortable corner.
"My dear Jim," expostulated his guest of honour, half an hour later, "there is not a drop of green Chartreuse, and you know I never drink the yellow. Do be a good boy and run over to the dining-room, and persuade the steward to give us some."
As he rose and left them, obedient to the Irish girl's request, she leaned over to Kingsland, who was seated next her, and handing him a square envelope, said quietly, and in a low voice: —
"I want this given to Colonel Darcy before Stanley returns – his party is still in the dining-room. Don't let our crowd see you take it."
"Oh, I say," he expostulated, inspecting the missive which was blank and undirected, "it's a risky thing to do, especially in the face of the whopper you just told his wife about not knowing him."
"I had to, 'Dottie' – I had indeed – she's so jealous she would tear the eyes out of any woman who ventured to speak to him."
"I won't do anything for you if you call me 'Dottie.' You know I hate it."
"Well, Jack then – dear Jack – do it to please me and don't stand there talking, Stanley may return any minute."
"All right, I'll go."
"And don't flourish that envelope, it's most important and – it's too late."
"The Chartreuse is coming," broke in the Secretary. "I met the steward in the hall – a letter to be posted?" he continued, seeing the missive, which the Lieutenant held blankly in his hand. "Give it to me, and I'll attend to it."
A sharper man might have saved the situation, but sharpness was not one of Kingsland's attributes, and dazed by the sudden turn of affairs, he allowed Stanley to take the letter.
"Why, it's not addressed!" he exclaimed, examining the envelope which bore no mark save the initials A. R. in blue, on the flap. "Whom is it to go to?"
"I don't know," replied the Lieutenant, shamefacedly.
"Where did it come from?"
Kingsland looked about for help or an inspiration, and finding neither fell back on the same form of words, repeating, "I don't know."
Miss Fitzgerald had started up on the impulse of the moment, but sank back in her seat as the Secretary said, slipping the missive into the inside pocket of his dress-coat: —
"I am afraid I must constitute myself a dead-letter office, and hold this mysterious document till called for."
CHAPTER III
PARLOUS TIMES
"We are living in parlous times," said the Chief Confidential Clerk, of the Departmental Head of the South American Section of Her Majesty's Foreign Office.
Mr. Stanley, Secretary of South American Legation, bowed and said nothing. Inwardly, he wondered just what "parlous" meant, and made a mental note to look it up in a dictionary on the first opportunity that offered.
The Chief Confidential Clerk was the most genial of men, who always impressed one with the feeling that, diplomatic as he might be at all other times, this was the particular moment when he would relax his vigilance and unburden his official heart. As a result, those who came to unearth his secrets generally ended by telling him theirs.
In this instance neither of the speakers knew anything of the subject in hand, a treaty relating to the possession of a sand bar at the mouth of a certain South American river. A matter said to have had its rise in a fit of royal indigestion, in the sixteenth century. Somehow it had never been settled. Each new ministry, each new revolutionary government was "bound to see it through," and the treaty was constantly on the verge of being "brought to an amicable conclusion," just as it had been for nearly three hundred years.
The fate of nations had, in short, drifted on that sand-bar and stuck