His thought trailed off into silence; and the silence lasted so long,
and he sat so still, that the ash fell unnoticed from his cigarette; and
presently the cigarette burned itself into the tip, and to his fingers.

He tossed it into the tray and laughed quietly.

Rare days--those days of the vanished protocol and its finding! He could
almost wish that they might be again; with a different _mise en scène_,
and a different ending--and a different client for his. He was becoming
almost sentimental--and he was too old a bird for sentiment, and quite
too old at this game; which had not any sentiment about it that was not
pretence and sham. Yet it was a good game--a mighty entertaining game;
where one measured wits with the best, and took long chances, and played
for high stakes; men's lives and a nation's honour.

He picked up the photograph and regarded it thoughtfully.

"And what are to be the stakes now, I wonder," he mused. "It's another
deal of the same old cards, but who are players? If America is one,
then, my lady, we shall see who will win this time--if you're in it; and
I take it you are, else why this picture. Yet to induce you to break
your rule and cross the Atlantic, the moving consideration must be of
the utmost weight, or else it's purely a personal matter. H-u-m! Under
all the circumstances, I should say the latter is the more likely. In
which event, I may not be concerned further than to return these--" with
a wave of his hand toward the exhibits.

For a while longer he sat in silence, eyes half closed, lips a bit
compressed; a certain sternness, that was always in his countenance,