Neither was Mrs Carfrae satisfied to find her beloved Johnny Carr's lawful wife disporting herself in her present company. One afternoon she heckled Jim Carthew upon the subject, to the extreme embarrassment of that loyal youth. The rest of the party had gone off to explore Algiers, and were safely occupied for the present with the contemplation of the passing show--ghostlike Moors in snowy burnouses, baggy-trousered members of that last resort of broken men, _La Légion Étrangère_, and spectacled French officials playing at colonies. Mrs Carfrae's chair had been wheeled into a corner of the open courtyard which occupied the middle of the Hôtel Magnifique, as far as possible from the base of operations of a pseudo-Tzigane orchestra which discoursed languorous melody twice daily; and its occupant was dispensing to Carthew what Thémistocle was accustomed to describe as "some five o'clock." "So you are leaving us, Mr Carthew," observed the hostess. "Yes, the day after to-morrow. There is a boat then. I must go. There is trouble brewing in the colliery districts again, and Sir John wants me." "And you will take Lady Carr with you?" "Oh no," said Carthew, flushing. "We are not together. I mean, it is not on her account that I am here." "So I have noticed," said Mrs Carfrae dryly. "I was invited here by the Hiltons," explained Carthew, and plunged into a sea of unnecessary corroborative details. "I was quite surprised to find Lady Carr here," he colluded. "I thought she was in London." "And why," inquired the old lady with sudden ferocity, "is she not at Belton, with her man?" The faithful Carthew stiffened at once. "I expect Sir John sent her out here to have a good time," he said. "He could not get away himself, so----" Mrs Carfrae surveyed him for a moment over her glasses. "You are a decent lad," she observed rather unexpectedly. This testimonial had its desired effect of reducing Carthew to silence, and Mrs Carfrae continued-- "You have been with John Carr for some time now, have you not?" "Yes; ever since I came down from Cambridge." "How did you meet him? He does not take to young men readily as a rule, so I have heard." "I had the luck," said Carthew, his eye kindling with historic reminiscence, "to meet him at dinner one night at the end of my third year, at my tutor's. Sir John was an old member of the College, staying there for the week-end. He told us at dinner that he had come up to find a good ignorant unlicked cub to help him with his work, who could be trusted to obey an order when he received one and act for himself when he did not. Those were his exact words, I remember." "Ay, they would be. Go on."