capital R. Then he looked into an empty glass profoundly. I have
a notion that I sat there staring and listening like a yokel at a
play. Mills' pipe was lying quite a foot away in front of him,
empty, cold. Perhaps he had no more tobacco. Mr. Blunt assumed
his dandified air--nervously.

"Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusive
drawing-rooms and also in other places, also exclusive, but where
the gossip takes on another tone. There they are probably saying
that she has got a 'coup de coeur' for some one. Whereas I think
she is utterly incapable of that sort of thing. That Venetian
affair, the beginning of it and the end of it, was nothing but a
coup de tete, and all those activities in which I am involved, as
you see (by order of Headquarters, ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but
that, all this connection, all this intimacy into which I have
dropped . . . Not to speak of my mother, who is delightful, but as
irresponsible as one of those crazy princesses that shock their
Royal families. . . "

He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that Mills' eyes seemed
to have grown wider than I had ever seen them before. In that
tranquil face it was a great play of feature. "An intimacy," began
Mr. Blunt, with an extremely refined grimness of tone, "an intimacy
with the heiress of Mr. Allegre on the part of . . . on my part,
well, it isn't exactly . . . it's open . . . well, I leave it to
you, what does it look like?"

"Is there anybody looking on?" Mills let fall, gently, through his
kindly lips.