innocence, has persuaded her exists in the Conservative Party. She is
a clever young lady and makes out a good case against us, though I am
sure I do not know whence she got her information. Not from you, I
suppose, Sir John--I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake."

So the matter was settled, as both of them knew it would be when they
left the room. The cash found its way into some nebulous account that
nobody could have identified with any party, and in the Dissolution
Honours, John Blake, Esq., J.P., was transformed into Sir John Blake,
Bart.; information that left tens of thousands of the students of the
list mildly marvelling why. As the same wonder struck them regarding
the vast majority of the names which appeared therein, this, however,
did not matter. They presumed, good, easy souls, that John Blake,
Esq., J.P., and the rest were patriots who for long years had been
working for the good of their country, and that what they had done in
secret had been discovered in high places and was now proclaimed from
the housetops.

Lady Jane was inclined to share this view. She knew that a great deal
of her husband's money went into mysterious channels of which she was
unable to trace the ends, and concluded in her Victorian-wife kind of
fashion, or at any rate hoped, that it was spent in alleviating the
distress of the "Submerged Tenth" which at that time was much in
evidence. Hence no doubt the gracious recognition that had come to
him. John Blake himself, who paid over the cash, naturally had no such
delusions, and unfortunately in that moment of exultation, when he
contemplated his own name adorning the lists in every newspaper, let
out the truth at breakfast at which Isobel was his sole companion. For
by this time Lady Jane had grown too delicate to come down early.