'Of course,' said Fotheringham, sententiously, with the grand air of Æolus soothing the discordant winds; 'when Cockshaw said he was against everything, he did not mean any indifference to the country. But we are running up terrible bills; you know, Empson, we got an awful snubbing from home about our deficit last year.' 'Well, but now about the Salt,' put in Blunt, whose task seemed to be to keep everybody to the point in hand; 'this is no question of deficit. I say it will pay, and the Government of India will lend us the money fast enough if they can be made to think so too.' 'Well,' said Cockshaw, stubbornly lighting another cheroot, and getting out his words between rapid puffs of smoke, 'it won't pay, you'll see, and Government will think as I do.' 'Then,' replied Blunt, 'you will excuse me for saying Government will think wrong, and you will have helped them. Have you examined the figures?' 'Yes,' said Cockshaw, with provoking placidity, 'and I think them, like all other statistics, completely fallacious. You have not been out here, Blunt, as long as we have.' 'No; but the laws of arithmetic are the same, whether I am here or not.' 'Well,' observed Fotheringham, 'I really do not see--forgive me, pray, for saying it--but, as senior member, I may perhaps be allowed the observation--I really do not see how Blunt can pretend to know anything about our Salt.' 'There is one thing I know about it,' said Blunt to Empson as they drove home together from the Board; 'whatever it is, it is not Attic!' While thus the battle raged within, Desvoeux, who had come with the Agent to the Board, took an afternoon's holiday, and found himself, by one of those lucky accidents with which Fortune favours every flirtation, in Mrs. Vereker's drawing-room, where Maud had just arrived to have luncheon and to spend the afternoon. Now Mrs. Vereker was a beauty, and, as a beauty should, kept a little court of her own in Dustypore, which in its own way was quite as distinct an authority as the Salt Board or the Agency itself. Her claims to sovereignty were considerable. She had the figure of a sylph, hair golden and profuse and real. She had lovely, liquid, purple eyes, into which whoever was rash enough to look was lost forthwith; and a smile--but as to this the position of the present chronicler, as a married man and the father of a family, renders it impossible for him to describe it as it deserved. Suffice it to say that, even in a faded photograph, it has occasioned the partner of his bosom the acutest pangs, and it would be bad taste and inexpedient to say more than that gentlemen considered it bewitching, while many married ladies condemned it as an unmeaning simper of a very silly woman. Mrs. Vereker affected to be greatly surprised at Desvoeux's arrival, and even to hesitate about letting him in; but the slight constraint of her manner, and the flush that tinged her cheek, suggested the suspicion that the call was not altogether fortuitous.