He broke off with a sudden laugh. Once or twice he had laughed like
that, and his manner was restless and uneasy. In a younger man, or one
less experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some
hidden excitement. Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with
the frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.

"What is it?"

He laughed--but he laughed uneasily--and spread out his hands in a
gesture of bewilderment.

"What is what?"

Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.

"Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly," she said. "Mr. Mangles
has arrived from Washington. You are here from Paris. A few minutes
ago old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en amateur, shook
hands with me. This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity. All the Vultures
are assembling, Paul. I can see that. I can see that my husband sees
it."

"Ah! you and yours are safe now. You are in the backwater--you and
Orlay--quietly moored beneath the trees."

"Finally," continued Lady Orlay, without heeding the interruption, "you
come to me with a light in your eye which I have seen there only once
or twice during nearly fifty years. It means war, or something very like
it--the Vultures."