When the butler flung wide the folding-doors into the dining-room and announced dinner, she was about to move on, when she suddenly stopped, and said, with a faint smile, ‘Will you give me your arm?’ Very simple words, and commonplace too, but enough to throw Atlee’s whole nature into a convulsion of delight. And as he walked at her side it was in the very ecstasy of pride and exultation. Dinner passed off with the decorous solemnity of that meal, at which the most emphatic utterances were the butler’s ‘Marcobrunner,’ or ‘Johannisberg.’ The guests, indeed, spoke little, and the strangeness of their situation rather disposed to thought than conversation. ‘You are going to Constantinople to-morrow, Mr. Atlee, my uncle tells me,’ said she, after a longer silence than usual. ‘Yes; his Excellency has charged me with a message, of which I hope to acquit myself well, though I own to my misgivings about it now.’ ‘You are too diffident, perhaps, of your powers,’ said she; and there was a faint curl of the lip that made the words sound equivocally. ‘I do not know if great modesty be amongst my failings,’ said he laughingly. ‘My friends would say not.’ ‘You mean, perhaps, that you are not without ambitions?’ ‘That is true. I confess to very bold ones.’ And as he spoke he stole a glance towards her; but her pale face never changed. ‘I wish, before you had gone, that you had settled that stupid muddle about the attack on--I forget the place.’ ‘Kilgobbin?’ ‘Yes, Kil-gobbin--horrid name!--for the Premier still persists in thinking there was something in it, and worrying my uncle for explanations; and as somebody is to ask something when Parliament meets, it would be as well to have a letter to read to the House.’ ‘In what sense, pray?’ asked Atlee mildly. ‘Disavowing all: stating the story had no foundation: that there was no attack--no resistance--no member of the viceregal household present at any time.’ ‘That would be going too far; for then we should next have to deny Walpole’s broken arm and his long confinement to house.’ ‘You may serve coffee in a quarter of an hour, Marcom,’ said she, dismissing the butler; and then, as he left the room--‘And you tell me seriously there was a broken arm in this case?’ ‘I can hide nothing from you, though I have taken an oath to silence,’ said he, with an energy that seemed to defy repression. ‘I will tell you everything, though it’s little short of a perjury, only premising this much, that I know nothing from Walpole himself.’ With this much of preface, he went on to describe Walpole’s visit to Kilgobbin as one of those adventurous exploits which young Englishmen fancy they have a sort of right to perform in the less civilised country. ‘He imagined, I have no doubt,’ said he, ‘that he was studying the condition of Ireland, and investigating the land question, when he carried on a fierce flirtation with a pretty Irish girl.’ ‘And there was a flirtation?’