“Are you going without your boots?” Well, I reached Charing Cross next evening, and there, on the platform, stood Grier _père_ to meet me. He was alone. “I have taken rooms at an hotel,” he said after our first hearty greeting. “I don’t want you at the house, because I fancy you will do more good by getting Karl to yourself of an evening, so I must ask you to be my guest at the Pall Mall Hotel.” “That is odd,” I said. “You will understand better when we have had a talk.” I did not explain that my ejaculation referred to the choice of the hotel and not to his action in sending me there. We entered his carriage and quitted the station. “I hope there is nothing seriously wrong with Karl?” I began. “No, no. Not at all. But you are the only man who really knows, or pretends to know, anything about this inf---- this wretched sixth sense of his, and it has come on again, worse than ever, since his engagement.” “Hertzblut! Is he going to marry Maggie after all?” “Maggie! Maggie! Why do you mention her? He is engaged to the Honorable Nora Cazenove, daughter of Lord Sandilands.” I leaned back in the carriage. I could almost have chuckled. “Ah,” I murmured softly to myself. “The other woman has arrived! Now there will be ructions!” CHAPTER XVI WOMEN CALLED HIM “THE MAGNET” Nevertheless, there must be some more convincing explanation of the telegram which brought me from Heidelberg than Karl’s matrimonial intentions. “Doesn’t the engagement meet with your approval?” I asked. “Most decidedly. It is a suitable match in every way. Karl has been nursing a constituency for a year or more. He is sure to win the seat at the next election. Lord Sandilands has such interest that his son-in-law will be quite a personage in the parliamentary world if he has any brains at all, and no one can deny Karl’s gifts in that direction.” “It would be difficult indeed. I think I have heard that Lord Sandilands himself is--er--” “A noodle, to put it mildly. But his daughter is a fine woman, an amazingly fine woman when one sees her father. They tell me his wife was an actress, and a great beauty; so perhaps the only wise thing his lordship ever did was to marry her. Nora is an only child. Both title and estates will pass to her son if she has one. So you see--” “I can see everything except the _raison d’être_ of my presence in London to-night.”