over such topics as the approaching downfall of England
(they had talked of it at Dulham Towers for sixty years),
or over the duty of England towards China, or the duty
of England to Persia, or its duty to aid the Young Turk
Movement, and its duty to check the Old Servia agitation.
The Duke became so interested in these topics and in
explaining that while he had never been a Little Englander
he had always been a Big Turk, and that he stood for a
Small Bulgaria and a Restricted Austria, that he got
further and further away from the topic of money, which
was what he really wanted to come to; and the Duke rose
from his conversations with a look of such obvious distress
on his face that everybody realized that his anxiety
about England was killing him.

And then suddenly light had come. It was on his fourth
day in New York that he unexpectedly ran into the Viscount
Belstairs (they had been together as young men in Nigeria,
and as middle-aged men in St. Petersburg), and Belstairs,
who was in abundant spirits and who was returning to
England on the _Gloritania_ at noon the next day, explained
to the Duke that he had just borrowed fifty thousand
pounds, on security that wouldn't be worth a halfpenny
in England.

And the Duke said with a sigh, "How the deuce do you do
it. Belstairs?"

"Do what?"