"You are. Now. 'Dear Madam. I am requested by my Lords of the Treasury to forward to you the enclosed cheque for one hundred pounds for your Privy Purse.' New line. 'I am also to state that no account of expenditure will be required.' New line. 'Be good enough to acknowledge receipt. Your obedient servant. To Miss Prohack, Grand Babylon Hotel.' Got it? 'Dear Sir. With reference to the action instituted by your company against Miss Mimi Winstock, and to my claim against your company under my accident policy. I have seen the defendant. She had evidently behaved in an extremely foolish not to say criminal way; but as the result of a personal appeal from her I have decided to settle the matter privately. Please therefore accept this letter as a release from all your liabilities to me, and also as my personal undertaking to pay all the costs of the action on both sides. Yours faithfully. Secretary, World's Car Insurance Corporation.' Wipe your eyes, wipe your eyes, Miss Warburton. You're wetting the notebook." "I was only crying because you're so kind. I know I _did_ behave in a criminal way." "Just so, Miss Warburton. But it will be more convenient for me and for you too if you can arrange to cry in your own time and not in mine." And he continued to address her, in his own mind: "Don't think I haven't noticed your aspiring nose and your ruthless little lips and your gift for conspiracy and your wonderful weakness for tears! And don't confuse me with Mr. Carrel Quire, because we're two quite different people! You've got to be useful to me." And in a more remote part of his mind, he continued still further: "You're quite a decent sort of child, only you've been spoilt. I'll unspoil you. You've taken your first medicine rather well. I like you, or I shall like you before I've done with you." Miss Warburton wiped her eyes. "You understand," Mr. Prohack proceeded aloud, "that you're engaged as my confidential secretary. And when I say 'confidential' I mean 'confidential' in the fullest sense." "Oh, quite," Miss Warburton concurred almost passionately. "And you aren't anybody else's secretary but mine. You may pretend to be everybody else's secretary, you may pretend as much as you please--it may even be advisable to do so--but the fact must always remain that you are mine alone. You have to protect my interests, and let me warn you that my interests are sometimes very strange, not to say peculiar. Get well into your head that there are not ten commandments in my service. There is only one: to watch over my interests, to protect them against everybody else in the whole world. In return for a living wage, you give me the most absolute loyalty, a loyalty which sticks at nothing, nothing, nothing." "Oh, Mr. Prohack!" replied Mary Warburton, smiling simply. "You needn't tell me all that. I entirely understand. It's the usual thing for confidential secretaries, isn't it?"