Well, when the singing, if it could be called singing, was over, Mrs. Ellison made the usual little compliments, which nobody minded one way or the other. But presently she had to leave; and while she was being rowed up the river by her nephew she was silent. When they reached the _Villeggiatura_ (the people were all outside, amid the confused light of the lanterns in the dusk) she said to him, in a low voice, as she bade him good-bye— "Vin, let me whisper something to you—a confession. _Claire Fontaine_ has done for me. That girl is a good girl. She is all right, any way." CHAPTER VIII. AN ALARM. On a certain still, clear, moonlight night a dog-cart containing two young men was being driven away from the little town of Mendover, out into the wide, white, silent country. The driver was Lord Musselburgh, and he seemed in high spirits, talking to his companion almost continuously, while he kept the stout little cob going at a rattling pace. "I am more pleased than I can tell you," he was saying. "Quite a triumph! Why, you took to it as a duck takes to water. Of course there’s something in having a responsive audience; and you can always get a noble band of patriots to cheer your proposal for a progressive income-tax when not one in ten of them has any income-tax to pay. I’m afraid they weren’t quite so enthusiastic about your scheme of compulsory insurance; indeed they seemed a little disappointed and offended; the Champion of the Proletariat was playing it a little low down on them; but a heavily increasing income-tax—oh, yes, that was splendid!—they saw the Rothschilds caught at last, and had visions of a land in which there shall be no more poor-rates or police-rates, perhaps not even water-rates or gas-rates. But it was your confounded coolness that surprised me—no beating about the bush—walking straight into it—and without preparation, too—" "I knew what I had to say," Vincent interposed, with a becoming modesty, "and it seemed simple enough to say it." "Yes, and so it is—when you have acquired the knack of forgetting yourself," said the young nobleman, oracularly. "And that appears to have come naturally to you, my boy. However, this is why I am so particularly pleased with your successful first appearance," Lord Musselburgh proceeded, as the dog-cart went bowling along the silent, white highway, between the black hedges. "I am about to unfold to you a great idea, Vin—perhaps prematurely, but you will be discreet. The project is mine; but I want help to carry it through; you and I must work together; and years and years hence we shill be recognised as the Great Twin Brethren, who saved the falling fortunes of England." Was he in jest or earnest? Vincent, knowing his friend’s sub-cynical habit of speech, listened without interposing a word.