"HIGH WELL-BORN INCOMPETENCE,-- "I only just pulled through! A very small slip nearly lost me everything. I believed you were going to Schloss Planta that day, not to Schloss Lebenstein. You changed your mind en route. That might have spoiled all. Happily I perceived it, rode up by the short cut, and arrived somewhat hurriedly and hotly at the gate before you. Then I introduced myself. I had one more bad moment when the rival claimant to my name and title intruded into the room. But fortune favours the brave: your utter ignorance of German saved me. The rest was pap. It went by itself almost. "Allow me, now, as some small return for your various welcome cheques, to offer you a useful and valuable present--a German dictionary, grammar, and phrase-book! "I kiss your hand. "No longer "VON LEBENSTEIN." The other note was to me. It was as follows:-- "DEAR GOOD MR. VENTVORTH,-- "Ha, ha, ha; just a W misplaced sufficed to take you in, then! And I risked the TH, though anybody with a head on his shoulders would surely have known our TH is by far more difficult than our W for foreigners! However, all's well that ends well; and now I've got you. The Lord has delivered you into my hands, dear friend--on your own initiative. I hold my cheque, endorsed by you, and cashed at my banker's, as a hostage, so to speak, for your future good behaviour. If ever you recognise me, and betray me to that solemn old ass, your employer, remember, I expose it, and you with it to him. So now we understand each other. I had not thought of this little dodge; it was you who suggested it. However, I jumped at it. Was it not well worth my while paying you that slight commission in return for a guarantee of your future silence? Your mouth is now closed. And cheap too at the price.--Yours, dear Comrade, in the great confraternity of rogues, "CUTHBERT CLAY, Colonel." Charles laid his note down, and grizzled. "What's yours, Sey?" he asked. "From a lady," I answered. He gazed at me suspiciously. "Oh, I thought it was the same hand," he said. His eye looked through me. "No," I answered. "Mrs. Mortimer's." But I confess I trembled. He paused a moment. "You made all inquiries at this fellow's bank?" he went on, after a deep sigh. "Oh, yes," I put in quickly. (I had taken good care about that, you may be sure, lest he should spot the commission.) "They say the self-styled Count von Lebenstein was introduced to them by the Southampton Row folks, and drew, as usual, on the Lebenstein account: so they were quite unsuspicious. A rascal who goes about the world on that scale, you know, and arrives with such credentials as theirs and yours, naturally imposes on anybody. The bank didn't even require to have him formally identified. The firm was enough. He came to pay money in, not to draw it out. And he withdrew his balance just two days later, saying he was in a hurry to get back to Vienna."