an endive salad. The sweets are your affair. The savoury must be a
cheese soufflé. And for wine--"

He broke off and looked across the table. Jane smiled apologetically.

"You will never bring me out again," she declared. "I want some
champagne."

"I never felt more like it myself," he agreed. "The _Pommery_, George,
slightly iced, an aperitif now, and the dinner can take its course. We
will linger over the _hors d'oeuvres_ and we are in no hurry."

George departed and Tallente smiled across at his companion. It was a
wonderful moment, this. His steady success of the last few months, the
triumph of the afternoon had never brought him one of the thrills which
were in his pulses at that moment, not one iota of the pleasurable sense
of well-being which was warming his veins. The new menace which had
suddenly thrown its shadow across his path was forgotten. Governments
might come or go, a career be made or broken upon the wheel. He was
alone with Jane.

"Now tell me all the news at Woolhanger?" he asked.

"Woolhanger lies under a mantle of snow," she told him. "There is a
wind blowing there which seems to have come straight from the ice of the
North Pole and sounds like the devil playing bowls amongst the hills."

"The hunting?"

"All stopped, of course. A few nights ago, two stags came right up to