‘My dear, I know she is not endowed with venomous fangs, though she has the wisdom of the serpent. I am prepared to do anything for you in any shape or form, but I do draw the line at Miss Wakefield. As regards interviewing her upon such a subject, I must respectfully but firmly decline.’ ‘Surely you don’t object to such a course being taken?’ Edgar asked eagerly. ‘There is no particular harm in it.’ ‘On the contrary, I think it is the right course to adopt; but I do _not_ propose to be the victim,’ said Mr Carver drily. ‘If any one in this select company has some evil to atone for, and wants a peculiarly torturing penance, let him undertake the task.’ Felix looked at Mr Bates; Edgar looked at his wife, and each waited politely and considerately for the others to speak. It is not often one meets such pure disregard of self in this grasping world. However, the task must be done; and as Mr Carver disclaimed it, and Bates had no interest in the affair, moreover, Eleanor not being expected to volunteer, manifestly the work lay before the American, Edgar, or Felix. The American, like another Curtius, was prepared to fling himself into the gulf. With characteristic and national modesty, he merely waited, willing to yield the van of battle; but the delicacy of the others left him no alternative. He volunteered to go. ‘I am a man of few words,’ he said, ‘and I guess I am about calculated to fill the vacancy. I am alone in the world, and if I fail to return, there will be no dear one to mourn the loss. I have one little favour to ask before I go, and that is, in case the worst happens, to spare me an epitaph. You will think of me sometimes; and when you sit round your winter firesides and the wind is howling in the naked trees’—— Here he waved his hands deprecatingly towards the company, as if praying them to spare his emotions. Mr Carver’s eyes twinkled at this tirade. ‘Well, that is settled then,’ he said. ‘The sooner you go the better. Shall we say to-morrow?—Very good. The address is 34 Cedar Road, Hampstead.’ ‘It is well,’ said the victim to friendship. ‘Before I quit you once and for ever, I should like to break the bread of joviality once more; for the last time, I should like to look upon the wine when it is red. To drop the language of metaphor, I invite you all to lunch with me at the _Holborn_.’ It was left, then, in Mr Slimm’s hands to consummate what he denominated as ‘working the oracle.’ ‘What do you think of my dream, now?’ Eleanor asked her husband as they walked home together. ‘Your “Argosy with golden sails?”’ queried Edgar. ‘Well, I am beginning to think it may come into port after all.’ * * * * * Like the ‘condemned man’ of the penny-a-liner, Mr Slimm passed a good night, and the thought of the task he had undertaken did not deter him from making a hearty and substantial breakfast. Without so much as a tremor, he ordered a cab, and sped away northwards on his diplomatic errand.