"No one is likely to enter this room, unless summoned by me," said Miss Brewer. "You may speak freely, and at any length you please, Mr. Carrington; but I warn you, you are speaking to a person who has no faith in any profession of disinterested regard." As she spoke, Miss Brewer leaned back in her chair, folded her hands before her, and assumed an utterly impassible expression of countenance. No less promising recipient of a confidential scheme could have been seen: but Victor Carrington was not in the least discouraged. He replied, in a cheerful, deferential, and yet business-like tone: "I am quite aware of that, Miss Brewer; and for my part, I should not feel the respect I do feel for you if I believed you so deficient in sense and experience as to take any other view. I don't offer myself to you in the absurd disguise of a _preux chevalier_, anxious to espouse the unprofitable cause of two unprotected women in an equivocal position, and in circumstances rapidly tending to desperation." Here Victor Carrington glanced at his companion; he wanted to see if the shot had told. But Miss Brewer cared no more for the almost open insult, than she had cared for the implied interest conveyed in the exordium of his discourse. She sat silent and motionless. He continued: "I have an object to gain, which I am resolved to achieve. Two ways to the attainment of this object are open to me; the one injurious, in fact destructive, to you and Madame Durski, the other eminently beneficial. I am interested in you. I particularly like Madame Durski, though I am not one of the legion of her professed admirers." Miss Brewer shook her head sadly. That legion was much reduced in its numbers of late. "Therefore," continued Carrington, without seeming to observe the gesture, "I prefer to adopt the latter course, and further your interests in securing my own. I suppose you can at least understand and credit such very plain motives, so very plainly expressed, Miss Brewer?" "Yes," she said, "that may be true; it does not seem unlikely; we shall see." "You certainly shall. My explanation will not, I hope, be unduly tedious, but it is indispensable that it should be full. You know, Miss Brewer, that Sir Reginald Eversleigh and I are intimate friends?" Miss Brewer smiled--a pale, prolonged, unpleasant smile, and then replied, speaking very deliberately: "I know nothing of the kind, Mr. Carrington. I know you are much together, and have an air of familiar acquaintance, which is the true interpretation of friendship, I take it, between men of the world--of _your_ world in particular." The hard and determined expression of her manner would have discouraged and deterred most men. It did not discourage or deter Victor Carrington.