Chapter V

The butler, hovering in Olympian calm over the ministrant footman, stepped forward, moved the teapot one-sixteenth of an inch, stood back, bowed his head in acknowledgment of perfection at length achieved and passed out in the wake of his underling. Vingie, from the depths of her cane armchair, blessed with her eyes the sweeping terrace of Wynwood, the velvet swathes of shaven lawn, the umbrageousness of the park, and came back contentedly to the contemplation of her own delicious ankles. Sir Charles, draped in the creamiest of flannel trousers, silk shirt, and the violent blazer of the dear old regiment, surveyed her in dreamy reverie.

Vingie, pouring his tea with slender fingers, drenching it generously in cream, fondled him with a glance half provocative, half maternal. It is so hard for good-looking twenty to be altogether merciful.

"Charles," she murmured reproachfully, "I know you're thinking about Mrs. Trevor-James."

"Nothing of the kind," retorted Sir Charles. "I was looking at you and being perfectly happy. One can look at a beautiful ward and experience a solely esthetic pleasure. It's one of the few pure emotions of which we are capable."

"The violence of your flirtation with Mrs. Trevor-James has been a great comfort to me, Charles," pursued Vingie, totally unmoved. "It showed me that even at her age I shall still be dangerous, and it proved to me the perpetual charm of sowing wild oats. She isn't your first wild oat by any means, and yet you displayed a childish excitement that was very pathetic. In the days to come when I am a carefully corseted widow with a past----"

Sir Charles shook his head gravely.

"Youth! Youth!" he intoned, "so headstrong, so censorious, so inexperienced! Yours is the age of greedy emotions, Virginia. You mistake the harmless exercise of a perfect technique--since that is all it amounts to at my time of life--for the sort of temperamental thunder-storm you would indulge in if you dared. I have been a soldier, a diplomat, a man of the world, and I tell you candidly that wild oats in your case are like artificial pearls--a confession that you were unable to achieve the real thing. With the solemnization of every marriage a woman exchanges the inside of a cage for the outside and a man the outside of a cage for the inside. Speaking as a bachelor, honestly I don't see what more you can want."

"You're just a few years out of date, Charles. To-day a girl can sneak out of her cage for a little sight-seeing and sneak back again in time for the wedding. It's a sensible precaution, like learning the language and looking up the history of a foreign country before you go abroad. It enables one to know exactly the right sort of cakes and things to throw between the bars to cheer up one's poor caged man after he's caged."

A gentle smile modified Sir Charles' clean-cut mouth.

"Rupert has come on a lot of late," he said darkly. "You haven't seen him for a month or more. You'd be surprised. He ought to be here at any moment, unless the three-forty-five train is later than usual."

"And what has caused the miracle?" queried Vingie with delicate scorn.

"I shouldn't wonder if it's some girl," chuckled Sir Charles. "It would cause me a certain amount of amusement if you were to officiate one day as one of Mrs. Rupert's bridesmaids. He'd be certain to ask you; after all, he's known you since you were a child."

The distant purring of a car at the farther side of the house came soothingly to their ears. Two minutes later the tall form of Rupert emerged from a French window, his earnest preoccupied face wreathed in a deprecating smile. Vingie leaned back in her chair literally aghast at his transformation. She had expected a lank untidy figure, its trousers baggy-kneed, its jacket sagging at the pockets, its hair undisciplined, its shoes deplorable. She saw a young man of fashion slenderly embraced by an inspired morning coat beneath which a cream waistcoat peeped coyly. His striped trousers were ironed into a tin-like severity, his white spats and patent shoes gleamed, the silk hat he raised shot back the rays of the summer sun, and he carried a gold knobbed straight Malacca cane with a certain _panache_.

"Good afternoon," began this vision, a little self-consciously. "Forgive the festive appearance, but I came straight from an official Foreign Office luncheon. The chief is motoring down late with Jim Andaside. We're very worried about him. It is a most unfortunate business all round."

"Tell us about it while I give you some tea, you standardized Don Juan," scoffed Vingie. "Or perhaps you'd rather drink whisky-and-soda; I'm afraid we haven't any absinthe. Do find him a cigarette, Charles; it's the one touch lacking."

The bad habits of a lifetime not being conquered in a moment, Rupert Frack tossed his glossy hat carelessly on to the grass and subsided into a chair. Vingie stared in fascination at his sleek, brilliantined head. "I mustn't," he said soberly. "Tea, please. The chief will use his discretion. I rather think he wishes to consult Uncle Charles. It's lovely weather for June, isn't it? By jove, Virginia, what topping tea-cakes!"

"He even has polite conversation on the tip of his tongue," commented Vingie. "Where did you learn all this, Rupert? Whose is the white reforming hand?"

"To tell you the truth," he confessed, "it became my duty to cultivate a certain rather attractive lady in whom the Foreign Office was interested. We deported her last week, but newly acquired mannerisms are apt to cling. I hope nothing unfortunate has happened to the chief. Jim was bringing him down in a new car of recent design. They should really be here by now."

"Man proposes but God disposes," commented Sir Charles, offering his cigarette-case to Vingie.

A violent commotion resembling machine-gun fire heralded the arrival upon a winding drive beneath the terrace of a car bristling with ferocity whose two-seated body contained a rather grim-faced young man and Lord Fordingbridge. His lordship descended with dignity from the severely braked vehicle, which emitted irregular and protesting booms from its exhaust, contemplated the exiguous body festooned with luggage and spare wheels, shrugged his shoulders resignedly and climbed the flight of stone steps leading to the terrace. He removed his gray tall hat in sweeping homage to Virginia and gazed down on the assembled tea-party.

"Jim is a good-hearted fellow and means well," he observed judicially. "Nevertheless I have envied the French aristocrats journeying in a tumbril to the guillotine ever since we left Hyde Park Corner. The certainty of their end, swift and comparatively painless, gave rise to my somewhat unchristian feeling. To have one's innermost self spread out for the vulgar to gaze upon--an imminent prospect for the last twenty miles--rather appals me. My dear Virginia, to see you is more than sufficient reward for my sufferings. You look positively blooming."

She smiled graciously and offered him a slender hand which he raised to his lips in the old-time manner. She had a definite esteem for this rubicund old gentleman with the heart of a child and the eye of a connoisseur. He presented the Honorable James Andaside, a youthful person of quiet exterior, foreboding hidden fires, whose battered blue suit and stained finger-tips bespoke a descendant of Tubal Cain, the Father of Artificers. His eyes dwelt gratefully on Vingie and his voice wooed her, for women and petrol engines have much in common and a man who is clever with cars may toy skilfully with girls.

Then, turning to Lord Fordingbridge he said briefly:

"Don't you agree she ought to land the Iberian contract?" He jerked a wise young head toward the silent monster in the drive. Lord Fordingbridge raised his eyebrows.

"We certainly progressed by leaps and bounds, if that is a recommendation."

"You don't expect," remonstrated Jim Andaside, "a car with a high compression engine, overlap valve timing, racing cams, aluminum pistons and drilled con-rods to doddle along like a ten-year-old taxicab."

"It is not my custom to indulge in fatuous expectations," responded Lord Fordingbridge gravely, "and even if it were I should reflect at some length before aspersing the very delicately organized mechanism on which you and your associates have lavished so much anxious thought."

Jim Andaside shrugged his shoulders.

"The only thing to do is to marry that infernal woman," he declared. "After all, what does it matter? I spend all my time at the works."

"I shall revoke your passport, my dear fellow," countered Lord Fordingbridge with his most child-like smile. "You won't be able to leave the country. I may be only a foolish old man, but one day you'll succeed to the title and we can't have the Earl of Borth tied up to a Dago countess. There are more ways of choking a cat than by killing it with butter."

"What is all this talk about the assassination of cats?" inquired Sir Charles in his gently indulgent voice. "The great question is, George, do you know the name of a horse that is bound to win at Ascot? Higgins, the head-gardener, is pressing me for new shoes for the pony that pulls the lawn-mower, and Virginia is positively in rags."

"No wise man would risk his reputation by tipping the sort of rubbish they breed now-a-days, Charles," sighed Lord Fordingbridge. "I've got a tenner on Belted Earl for the Gold Cup at fifties, but it's money thrown away. Jim, I wonder if you'd mind showing Rupert your pet leviathan. After all, he comes into this strange business that involves us all. Dear me, dear me, how extraordinary it seems! I don't know what Lord Palmerston would think if he were alive."

His shrewd old eyes followed the departing pair of young men with interest. "I find Rupert very well turned out lately," he went on dreamily to Vingie. "Positively proud to be seen about with him. But, my dear Virginia, my dear Charles, we are in a sad fix. The cares of state become almost more than I can bear."

"Rupert half-hinted at some crisis, but, of course, he gave nothing away," murmured Vingie with balm in her tone far transcending the bedside manner of the most expensive consulting specialist. "Do you think it might help if you were to tell us just the bare outlines?"

"The curse of old age is that one begins to take advantage of one's friends!" declared Lord Fordingbridge passionately. "Y'see it's like this: The war did one thing to one man and another thing to another, and it got young Jim Andaside mixed up in trade. He nearly broke poor Bob Berth's heart, especially as Geoffrey, the eldest boy, was smashed up so badly that marriage is out of the question for him. That means Jim will succeed to the title eventually. He always had low mechanical tastes--don't know one end of a horse from the other, God help him, and I never saw such a disgraceful game shot in my life--and he actually apprenticed himself to a firm of motor engineers, Daimely or Wolseler or some one.

"He was a Sapper during the war, and happened to come across some dreadful fellow--I'm not sure he wasn't an Australian--who had an idea for a new-fangled car. Anyhow, they started to manufacture the thing, but the Australian--if he was an Australian, but he may have been a Canadian--broke his neck testing a new model. So now Jim's on his own. He's made quite a bit of money out of it, which rather reconciled his family, for, of course, dear old Bob Borth hasn't a bean, and one day what does he do but find out that the Iberian Republic is bringing the whole of its internal transport up to date."

"Iberia? Iberia?" pondered Vingie. "Isn't that where the Russians used to knout prisoners to death before the Bolsheviks destroyed all the old Russian civilization?"

"You're thinking of Siberia, my dear," corrected Lord Fordingbridge with the large tolerance of the expert. "Iberia is one of those Latin countries, somewhere in the region of Portugal or something. Rupert would know exactly. Hitherto the Iberians have stuck to the ox-carts of their forefathers, but there's been a terrible wave of progress since the war, and the government felt it ought to encourage motor transport. So Jim gets an introduction to the president of Iberia and practically persuaded him to sign a contract for five thousand Catapult cars, just as a beginning, so to speak."

"Clever blighter," murmured Sir Charles, hiding a yawn. "But how dull and soulless these commercial transactions are, my dear George. How much more picturesque the Iberian peasant appears seated in the ox-cart of his ancestors!"

"Ah, but he wouldn't be supporting the Borths in their ancient fastnesses, dear old boy! However, before Señor Alphonso del Sol--that's the president's name, y' know--could put pen to paper, his only daughter appeared on the scene."

Lord Fordingbridge paused, and sighed.

"She has no mother to guide her, poor girl, her father being a widower. It may be that or it may be her nature, but I understand that Maria Dolores del Sol practically runs Iberia.

"They're a romantic lot of scoundrels, and there's probably a great deal more _noblesse oblige_ going about than is good for the young lady. She's nineteen, but of course, in that climate they mature very early."

He glanced guardedly at the chair which enshrined Vingie's twenty flower-like years. "Her seniority in this country would be at least twenty-five. Independent witnesses assert that she's remarkably good-looking--naturally, in that florid Iberian fashion. Probably nobody would look at her twice over here."

"Your delicacy does you credit, but pray don't mind me," said Vingie very sweetly. "The question is, what did she do to Jim Andaside?"

"She played him simply the meanest trick a woman has it in her to play," answered Lord Fordingbridge with emotion. "She fell in love with him at first sight, and in a long life of diplomacy I never heard of anything more miserably selfish. Jim aroused in her all those terrible possessive instincts with which Providence curses woman; she conjured up visions of an establishment, a wedding ring, servants, tradespeople, cradles, and Heaven knows what else. She insists on marrying the poor boy, and if he refuses the contract for these five thousand cars will never be signed."

"And still," observed Sir Charles, "I fail to see why that should worry you. Jim isn't your child, and I imagine you haven't invested money in this undertaking."

"You don't understand, Charles. You've been out of harness for some time--_otium cum dignitate_ so to speak. Diplomacy and commerce are sadly mingled nowadays. Every ambassador carries a ready reckoner in his pocket. The Foreign Office has to keep an eye on a big deal with a foreign state; it means a lot of employment here next winter, and there's a certain prestige attaching to the whole thing. Jim's got the heart of a lion; he'd marry the girl sooner than lose the contract, but my feeling is that we sacrificed enough young lives during the war. Besides I can't hear of dear old Bob being saddled with an Iberian daughter-in-law. At the same time Jim won't listen to any scheme that jeopardizes the contract. You're a sound fellow, Charles, and you know how stupid I am. I wonder if you could think of any way out."

"I know a little about women and a great deal about Dagoes, and I can see Jim with a handle of a knife sticking out between his shoulder-blades," Sir Charles replied thoughtfully. "What is this car we are discussing? Has anybody ever heard of it? There is only one car that any decent person cares to be seen in, as far as I know."

Lord Fordingbridge, with shame written all over his face, furtively extracted a leaflet from his waist-coat pocket, adjusted his glasses, and read: "The Catapult car. For those who have no time. It needs none. Faster than a flapper. Wears like a wife. Scrap your 'ought-to'-mobile for the Buzz-bus that Does!"

"I call that jolly clever!" commented Vingie.

"May God forgive him," groaned Sir Charles.

"It goes on to mention things like 'full-floating axles' and 'spiral-bevel drives,'" explained Lord Fordingbridge apologetically, "but I needn't profane your ears with any more. Nevertheless I understand that for the sort of people who like that kind of thing the Catapult car is most satisfactory. The Iberian Government proposed to guarantee a scheme of easy payments--a dreadful system devised for the classes that can neither owe like a gentleman nor pay cash like a profiteer. As I said, however, Maria Dolores has queered everything. There's a kind of moratorium for a fortnight and after that, Heaven alone knows."

"Well," declared Sir Charles, "I don't want to seem like a rat leaving the sinking ship, but I should like to be excused from interfering, George. Blackmail I can understand, and embezzlement, and highway robbery, but this has the drawbacks of each and the virtues of neither. If I haven't got a pure heart I like to have clean hands."

"How wise you are, Charles, darling. It takes a woman to beat a woman at her own game. As long as her heart is pure she can always wash her hands," said Vingie in her clear modern voice, smiling a little.

"Ah!" sighed Lord Fordingbridge. He leaned back easily in his comfortable chair. The anxious lines round his mouth relaxed. He hummed a little tune, one that took London by storm in 1878. "My dear," he went on craftfully, "it is quite a time since I saw the rose-garden. I wonder whether you would be so kind as to show it me. Somehow or other I can never manage to grow roses like Charles does. He brings a touch of genius to everything."

She drifted rose-garden ward beside him, utterly adorable in her brief tennis frock. Lord Fordingbridge felt himself move in an atmosphere of extreme benevolence dashed with romance. Ultimately he took a perfect specimen of Gloire de Dijon speculatively between thumb and finger, and said simply:

"My dear Virginia, what is your opinion?"

"How should a mere foolish girl rush in where Cabinet ministers fear to tread?" responded Vingie with humility.

"In this case, to be quite frank, she would do it almost on her own terms."

"My poor friend, you must indeed be worried! I'd love to help you for nothing because I'm ever so fond of you, but I'm very hard up and Charles is such a dear I can't bear to sponge on him. You do understand, don't you?"

"I think I could promise a commission of ten shillings per car supposing the deal for this five thousand cars goes through without Jim's marrying Maria Dolores. That's two thousand five hundred pounds. It would buy quite a number of frocks."

"Yes. Thank you!" said Vingie, raising her fair young face to the light and letting Lord Fordingbridge admire it in the academic spirit of an expert. "A girl, of course, doesn't make a fool of herself over a man like a man does of himself over a girl. Jim must appeal to her vanity. Probably he shows up rather well beside the local men; he's more athletic and capable, and he's done a certain amount. Besides it's practically certain he made love to her, partly for the sake of business, mostly from habit. The great thing is not to thwart her or else she'll never let him go. If we could show her something better than Jim, or make her feel he's not worth troubling about, the whole thing's perfectly simple. It's a very delicate matter. I should need to go out to Iberia, and take Charles, and probably Rupert. You see, she mustn't get the idea that I want Jim myself. I'd suggest that I wouldn't touch him with a long stick. I expect I'm putting it all very badly. May I have a quiet talk with Jim after dinner? Do you feel you can trust me?"

Lord Fordingbridge patted gently the loveliest shoulder this generation has produced.

"Tiresome and ugly monuments have been erected in important thoroughfares to people who have done far less than you are about to accomplish," he said with conviction....

"Mary," announced Vingie half an hour later, "I must try to be almost nice-looking this evening. Chuck an extra handful of bath-salts in the bath--those _Baisers d'Amoureuse_ are the thrilliest I think--and I should like a rather passionate make-up. I want to impress a young man who's just left the most beautiful girl in Iberia. Do you think we can manage it?"

"With the cream and gold gown it'll be quite simple, miss. Accustomed as he has been to dark young ladies wearing brilliant shades, your fair complexion and a gown to match will take his breath away."

"What a comfort you are, Mary--so sympathetic and understanding," murmured Vingie, snatching a kimono about her slender form and sliding her little feet into pink mules.

In truth, when after a very satisfactory dinner, the one girl among three men, the pampered darling of an admiring trinity, she took Jim Andaside apart, subjecting him to the third degree, herself and her intriguing frock reduced him to a very suitable frame of mind.

She took in subconsciously his alert figure, the gray eyes in a thin tanned face, the intelligent hands.

"Lord Fordingbridge suggested I might be able to help over this Iberian affair," she began slowly. "Do you mind telling me exactly how you stand with Maria Dolores!"

His eyes dwelt thoughtfully on hers.

"Strange as it may sound, she insists on marrying me. I've done everything in reason. I gave her a Catapult salon with a gold-plated body and scarlet cord upholstery. It sounds disgusting, but it suits the Iberian taste. I've left her my head tester, Pete Hannen, to drive it, because it's one of three racing models, with a special engine all machined out of the solid, and I don't want her to break her neck. She rides about looking like the band-wagon out of a circus, as happy as a kid."

"Have you ever kissed her?"

"I never tell tales. Besides, what's that got to do with it?"

"Well," said Vingie severely, "you shouldn't have done."

"You don't know Iberia as well as I do," he sighed.

"'The wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandu
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.'

Besides, when she's in the mood Maria Dolores positively palpitates, and if a young lady produces a stiletto from her garter and spikes it through your shirt over your heart, and swears you shall never live to look at another woman, and then you have to take the stiletto away, and she shows you the marks of your fingers on her wrist, life becomes a little difficult."

"The idea is to convince her that personally you're not worth bothering about."

"I'm not proud, but you'll have a job to find anything to beat me in Iberia."

"Do you _want_ to marry this girl?" demanded Vingie icily.

"God forbid! I don't want to marry any girl until I've sold a Catapult to every man, woman and child who's got the price of it. But I should hate you not to realize the difficulties we have ahead of us."

He smiled gently and placed his finger-tips together.

"It's a great life if you don't weaken, isn't it? But I'll do anything in order to be rescued. I want to plant those five thousand cars on the Iberian public."

"Well, if you'll be kind enough to leave me and ask Lord Fordingbridge to spare me a few minutes I dare say it can be arranged," said Vingie, with more casualness than actually she felt. It did not seem desirable for the young man to overrate his personal charm because he had impressed a simple Iberian damsel unaccustomed to the Anglo-Saxon. Presently Lord Fordingbridge arrived.

"How wonderfully you understand women," murmured Vingie as he stood surveying her with respectful homage. "Do sit down and I'll try to work out a plan. The only thing I can think of is to make her give him up out of pique. If you could arrange for Charles and Rupert and me to go out to Iberia as I said, and for Charles and Rupert to pose as directors of the Catapult Car Company while Jim is just a salesman, it might work wonders. Of course, we'll all treat Maria Dolores and her father most tactfully and rather snub Jim. I think I'll be engaged to Rupert for the time being--it doesn't matter; I know him so awfully well--and that will annoy Maria Dolores too. And if the worst comes to the worst we can invite her over here. I should like to arrange a little newspaper publicity for her in case of accidents. Mr. Berriman--of the _Daily Tale_--can work anything. If I could promise to take a little advertising space for this car he'd feed out of my hand."

"Just as you wish, my dear Virginia," replied Lord Fordingbridge. "Jim can't afford to refuse me anything at the moment. I will arrange for him to transfer the necessary stock to Charles and Rupert; it amounts merely to a paper transaction, for they will hardly wish to retain an interest in the company. I will also give instructions for cabins to be reserved in a steamer sailing, shall we say, at the end of next week, and accommodation in Peixoes, the capital of Iberia. That is, I'll leave it all to Rupert; I'm afraid I haven't a head for these tiresome details, but he's a wonderful fellow. Now I can scarcely look up a train in a time-table, but then, why should I if I can get somebody else to do it for me?"

Vingie rose from her chair, placed a hand affectionately on his arm, and moved across the drawing-room to the open French windows giving upon the terrace. A full moon sailed high in the summer heavens and the mingled scent of lawns and flower borders drifted intoxicatingly on the air.

"It's an ideal sentimental setting," she murmured _à propos_ of nothing. "Could I borrow Rupert for a moment or two?"

When Rupert stepped out on to the terrace she was standing by a vast ornamental vase set on the balustrade dividing the terrace from the gardens. Slowly she raised one white arm to remove the cigarette from between her lips, turned, leaned against the balustrade and faced him.

"I hardly know you nowadays, Rupert," she began irrelevantly. "You used to look like something out of a rag-bag. Now you're perfectly beautiful; was the deported lady so very charming?"

Rupert Frack, a very modish figure indeed in one of the daring new double-breasted white dress waistcoats, shrugged his shoulders with dandified grace.

"Have you ever observed, Virginia, how extremely trivial life is?" he asked with cynical flippancy. "Even you judge entirely by exteriors. For instance, my good work in connection with the Navigable Waters of the Danube, my Minute on the Trans-Caucasian Iron Mines, my Report on the Latvian Boundary Commission left you absolutely unmoved. But because a man runs an iron rather more frequently up and down the legs of my trousers, because I brilliantine my hair and double my tailor's bill, you are impressed."

"I'm not impressed but I used to be rather sorry for you," explained Vingie in the kindness of her heart.

"Well," replied Rupert, dropping his platform manner, "it doesn't matter. You see one has to have one's pose; you've yours, Fordingbridge has his and I have mine. It took people's eye, it gave me time to work, I had to work in order to get on. But, having established myself in the Foreign Office, I can afford to blossom forth a little. How lovely blossoming is when you've kept yourself severely in bud-formation for ever so many years."

"I never did. I was always a wild one, the gilded little prodigal, the sickening anxiety in darling Charles' stately life. I've sown several wild oats, Rupert, and I'm on the point of sowing some more. You've got to come and help sow. It's this sordid business of Jim Andaside and the Iberian siren, Lord Fordingbridge has lent me you for the time being, but I suppose you've heard. Now that you've started to blossom it may make life even more dangerous for me, but you little know what chilled-steel nerve a girl has to have in these insidious days. By the way, Rupert, how do I strike you in your blossoming state?"

She stood before him, chin lifted, lips parted, eyes daring him.

Rupert smiled a smile more eloquent than words. The best cut sleeve in Mayfair crinkled to enfold her slight beauty; his half-sensitive, half-stern mouth stooped to hers. With a calm, unhurried turn of her head, Vingie foiled him, with that barren gesture every pretty girl knows so well and enjoys so much. She moved carelessly from the circle of his arm and looked him up and down.

"For the last four years, Mr. Rupert Frack," she said venomously, "I've been just as pretty as I am now, just as fascinating, just as enthusiastic, and you preferred the waters of the Danube. I dare say you knew what you were doing, but you don't imagine I'm going to stand still like a good little girl and be kissed on the first occasion when you can distinguish me from a Caucasian iron mine, do you?"

"And you don't suppose you can stand there asking for it and not have me try, do you?" reproved Rupert.

"I never need to ask, and I'm not accustomed to men who merely try. No, go away, and listen. You've repented a little too late, Rupert. By now so many men have made love to me that I'm very difficult. I doubt if you'll ever appeal to me in the right way. I know you so well--I can see the very thought flick in and out of your mind. But you shall have this much opportunity. Directly we're outside the three-mile limit on our voyage to Iberia, you will become officially engaged to me, the engagement to cease as soon as we reenter the three-mile limit on our way back. This engagement carries no privileges and I shall be very exacting, but it'll be a wonderful chance for you to learn. Now you may take me indoors."

Somewhere within, Jim Andaside, having repaired the stricken motor of a large gramophone, was giving it a trial run, and the strains of a foxtrot quivered in the air. Vingie sighed faintly, snuggled into Rupert's arms and whirled with him over the polished parquet of the vast drawing-room. "Dancing lessons too!" mocked Vingie. "Oh, Rupert, Rupert, you reckless dog!"

The music of the gramophone ceased. At the foot of the historic staircase she paused and extended a slender hand. Reverently he raised it to his lips.

"George Fordingbridge does it better, but the instinct is praiseworthy," murmured Vingie. "Good night, Rupert, darling."

Mr. Berriman was glad when Vingie invited him to a tête-à-tête luncheon at Sir Charles' town house in Park Street. Accustomed to dealing with mere reporters, foreign adventurers, privy conspirators and rebels, his keen quiet eyes rested with pleasure on his adorable hostess clad in a summer toilet of such inspiration as even improvers might not fell or hem until they had been beaten with rods.

Somewhere in the thirties, disillusioned and self-reliant, he knew he had not been asked for nothing, so he said politely:

"It's some time since we made newspaper history together. What scoop have you got for me this time, Miss Lauriston?"

Vingie laughed and shook her head. Mr. Berriman thought he had never seen anything more fascinating than the side curl that hid her ears.

"You know I've never brought you a scoop yet, but one day we'll wreck Fleet Street," she crooned. "I'll be perfectly candid. This is the situation."

Mr. Berriman listened quietly to the plight of Jim Andaside deftly set forth.

"What I want you to do," explained Vingie, "is to work as many paragraphs about Maria Dolores as you can into the _Daily Tale_. Let me have the name and address of your Peixoes correspondent and I'll send them through him. The idea is to give the girl a swollen head and make her despise Jim. In return I can promise you a certain amount of advertising, and the exclusive news of the contract, if we put it through. Will that be fair, do you think?"

"Perfectly," answered Mr. Berriman gravely. "I'd like some personal stuff about you too, if you don't mind. We could use a photograph, and have a little story about your trip to Iberia, referring to you as the charming young society beauty. I realize how you must loathe anything of the kind but you have a certain responsibility to the public."

"And if I have to bring Maria Dolores to England I can still rely on you, can't I?"

"Let me choose my own photographer and we'll boost her even if she's as plain as a pikestaff," promised Mr. Berriman. "Forgive me if I run away but I've got a man coming to see me at three. Unfortunately life isn't all feasting and revelry. How I wish it were!"

After he had gone Vingie sat idling joyfully, savoring adventure to come. Upon her musing the arrival of a messenger broke abruptly. He brought a note from Rupert and a sheaf of roses, typifying both sides of that astonishing young man's nature, the routine and the romantic.

The note contained a _résumé_ of necessary facts: "The train leaves at ...... the car will be at the door at ...... the boat sails at ...... on ...... your state room is number ......" Attached to this order of march she found a list of useful phrases:

It is too expensive; have _Es demasiado caro. No_
you nothing cheaper? _tiene usted nada mas barato?_

I do not like garlic. _No me gusta ajo._

Can you tell me the way _Puede usted dirigirme a la_
to the railway station, _estación tramvia--policia--_
tramway, police station, _casa de correos._
post-office?

Vingie sniffed fitfully at the roses.

"He might be worth training. Unfortunately one never finds them ready-made. Well, we shall have a chance to see in a few days," she murmured.

As the S.S. _Badajoz_ shook the third territorial mile from her creaming wake, Vingie slid an expensive diamond and sapphire ring from the third finger of her right hand to the third finger of her left, extended the hand meaningly to Rupert, and withdrew it swiftly. The gesture was not lost upon him; thenceforth he became her slave according to his, as yet, limited comprehension. Sir Charles passed idle days reading or in the practise of such pastimes as poker, bridge, or even a little quiet baccarat. Jim Andaside scarcely left the entrails of two racing model Catapults, camouflaged to look like the standard product, the deceptive sprats with which he hoped to catch golden Iberian mackerel.

On the last night of the voyage they drank success to their enterprise in the golden waters of France. Vingie gazed thoughtfully at her three fellow travelers, dwelling particularly on Jim.

"Remember," she said at last, "this is to be no joy-ride. My one object in life is to sell Catapults. People's love-troubles don't interest me. I look on you two young men simply as so much human material for bringing me in ten shillings per car on a sale of five thousand cars."

"You are distraught with commercialism, my dear Virginia," declared Sir Charles gravely. "Oblige me by taking her on deck, Rupert, and letting her look at the moon. I mean the boat deck not the promenade deck. One is nearer the moon on the boat deck."