The curtains were not drawn across the windows, that Lord Vest might lose nothing of the sweet evening air, which he always held to be good for him until it gave him a cold in the head. Over his employer’s shoulder Mr. Dunn could see the lights of the Mall glowing against the dark tapestry of St. James’s Park. To the left, twilight draped the Horse Guards and the great buildings of Government, whence, had Mr. Dunn only known, the owls were at that moment fleeing on their ominous business. To the right, night fought with day for the honour of shrouding the palace of the King of England, who is also Emperor of India and Protector of the Faith, which some people nowadays seem inclined to forget. Great automobiles would every now and then pass to and fro between the noble trees that delight those who have the leisure to walk about the avenue of the Mall. Mr. Dunn would have found it, at that moment, very agreeable to be walking about the avenue of the Mall. Mr. Dunn would, in point of fact, have parted with money to exchange places with the meanest walker in London; for the situation of private secretary to a lord is not always what the well-informed call a sinecure. Mr. Dunn was just thinking how nice it would be to have a sinecure, whatever it might be, when the second butler winked at him. The second butler thought the whole affair very funny, and the silence very funny indeed. The second butler thought he knew everything. Mr. Dunn made a mental note to the effect that he must not forget, immediately after dinner, to tell the second butler that he was an ass. That is if he, Mr. Dunn, was alive. Now for Lord Vest, so much has been written of the early beginnings of that powerful and ill-fated nobleman that it would be impertinent, at this hour, to give more than a broad outline of his life. Mr. Justinian Pant was an Australian gentleman of great fortune who had in the past decade been raised to a baronetcy (Sir Justinian Pant, Bart.), a barony (Lord Pant of Warboys, in the county of Huntingdonshire), a viscounty (Viscount Pant of Warboys), an earldom (the Earl of Cowden, in the county of Sussex) and a marquisate (the Marquess of Vest, in the county of Cornwall) for services to the State. The bulletin announcing his last ennoblement had been welcomed by all England with every appearance of pleasure and gratification: that is, if one can judge by the newspapers of the day: as, of course, one can. The mere fact that the barony of Warboys, the earldom of Cowden, and the marquisate of Vest, were welcomed far otherwise by the newspapers of Australia gave the envious grounds for saying that the newspapers of England were prejudiced in the great man’s favour for the reason that he owned most of them: which is tantamount to saying that the glorious press of England is not free, an insinuation that one cannot deign to answer but with a dignified silence.