"Find me, please, that number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ which came in yesterday. I can prove it to you in two minutes," she said, turning triumphantly to Montresor on her right. "What's the matter?" said Sir Wilfrid, joining Lady Henry's circle, while Mademoiselle Le Breton disappeared into the back drawing-room. "Oh, nothing," said Montresor, tranquilly. "Lady Henry thinks she has caught me out in a blunder--about Favre, and the negotiations at Versailles. I dare say she has. I am the most ignorant person alive." "Then are the rest of us spooks?" said Sir Wilfrid, smiling, as he seated himself beside his hostess. Montresor, whose information on most subjects was prodigious, laughed and adjusted his eye-glass. These battles royal on a date or a point of fact between him and Lady Henry were not uncommon. Lady Henry was rarely victorious. This time, however, she was confident, and she sat frowning and impatient for the book that didn't come. Mademoiselle Le Breton, indeed, returned from the back drawing-room empty-handed; left the room apparently to look elsewhere, and came back still without the book. "Everything in this house is always in confusion!" said Lady Henry, angrily. "No order, no method anywhere!" Mademoiselle Julie said nothing. She retreated behind the circle that surrounded Lady Henry. But Montresor jumped up and offered her his chair. "I wish I had you for a secretary, mademoiselle," he said, gallantly. "I never before heard Lady Henry ask you for anything you couldn't find." Lady Henry flushed, and, turning abruptly to Bury, began a new topic. Julie quietly refused the seat offered to her, and was retiring to an ottoman in the background when the door was thrown open and the footman announced: "Captain Warkworth." VI The new-comer drew all eyes as he approached the group surrounding Lady Henry. Montresor put up his glasses and bestowed on him a few moments of scrutiny, during which the Minister's heavily marked face took on the wary, fighting aspect which his department and the House of Commons knew. The statesman slipped in for an instant between the trifler coming and the trifler gone. As for Wilfrid Bury, he was dazzled by the young man's good looks. "'Young Harry with his beaver up!'" he thought, admiring against his will, as the tall, slim soldier paid his respects to Lady Henry, and, with a smiling word or two to the rest of those present, took his place beside her in the circle. "Well, have you come for your letters?" said Lady Henry, eying him with a grim favor. "I think I came--for conversation," was Warkworth's laughing reply, as he looked first at his hostess and then at the circle. "Then I fear you won't get it," said Lady Henry, throwing herself back in her chair. "Mr. Montresor can do nothing but quarrel and contradict." Montresor lifted his hands in wonder.