"The mean, dirty, foreign hound," cursed Jim, between his teeth. "I don't pretend to be an angel, but if I'd dropped to that----" he shook his fist with a scarlet face. "An' to think Aksakoff should dare to make use of your room--the rotten cur. I'll tell him what I think." "Better not, Jim. Let sleeping dogs lie." "Sleepin' mongrels," muttered the Duke. "All right; but don't you ever speak to him again. Do you hear?" He blared out the order in a regimental manner, and Leah nodded. "Yes, dear," she said meekly, "we must draw the line somewhere." Jim nodded and gloomed, and rumbled something about Aksakoff that certainly was not a benediction. Then he harked back to his leading question, which had not yet been answered. "Why did you go to Southend?" "Katinka, who had rescued Demetrius from Sakhalin Island, made me go to see him. I had to obey, else there might have been trouble. The man was ill on board Strange's steamer." "Strange? Thought we paid the cad." "We did." Leah frowned at the recollection of the sum. "But he had some liking for Demetrius, and helped him to escape, worse luck." "Come now, don't say that. Siberia----" Jim shuddered. "Beastly place, Siberia." "Nonsense. The climate is quite decent if you make up your mind. I don't believe those convict creatures suffer so much as they say." She told the lie without sign of emotion, but all the same felt an inward qualm at the memory of the doctor's terrible narrative. The Duke chewed his moustache meditatively. "An' you saw Demetrius?" "Ugh!" Leah covered her face and rocked. "To live with that in my thoughts, and to think that I kissed It." "Why did you?" demanded Jim, furiously. "To get the cypher letters connected with the insurance plot," she replied, looking up; then detailed with necessary suppressions the greater and least repulsive part of her nauseous visit to the tramp steamer. The story sounded by no means pretty, and all her courage was necessary to enable her to arrive at finis. When she did the Duke sprang up in a pelting rage. "My wife to be treated like that!" "Oh, the treatment was not so bad," lied the Duchess, easily. "Of course, my mouth was sore with the fall on the stairs, but I managed to touch the lips of that--that---- Ugh! ugh!" "I'll go to Southend to-morrow," announced the Duke, frowning. "I can't thrash Demetrius, poor devil, but I'll hammer the life out of that second-hand skipper." "You won't find the boat there, Jim. I made inquiries, and learnt that it left, as Demetrius said it would, shortly after my visit. And we are quite safe. That kiss----" "Leave the kissin' alone," cried Jim, turning on her fiercely. "Of course, I see you couldn't quite help it; but----" "No 'but' at all," contradicted Leah, sharply. "If I hadn't bought back those cypher letters in that way the whole story might have come out. And then, Jim--well, you know."