“He’s perfectly kind and sweet; but he can’t, of course, quite conceal that he’s”--Jane paused, seeking a word. She flung her hands out in an expressive gesture, and let me have it--“Stupefied!” A moment later she added, “So are we all, if it comes to that.” “If one dared!” Katharine Constantine’s words came back. They were all stupefied at the idea. Would she dare to pile stupefaction on stupefaction by confronting them with the fact? In the course of the next few days the Powers That Be in the land took a hand--doubtless an entirely unconscious one--in the game. A peer died; his son, going up to the House of Lords, vacated the post of Under-Secretary for the Colonies. Amid a chorus of applause and of flattering prophecies Valentine Hare was appointed in his place. I met, at one of my clubs, a young friend who had recently entered the Colonial Office, and he told me that the new member of Administration’s secretary would in all probability be Oliver Kirby. “And it’ll give him a bit of a chance to show what’s he’s made of,” said my young friend, with the kindly patronage of youth. But, under present circumstances, it might create a slight awkwardness, say, about lunch-time, mightn’t it? I doubted whether that appointment would be made. VI Now I come to my share in this history. I confess that I approach it with doubt and trembling; but it has to be told here. It will never be told anywhere else--certainly not at the Lexingtons’, nor above all, for my peace’ sake, to my sister Jane. The following day was a Sunday, and, according to a not infrequent practice of mine, I took a walk in Hyde Park in the morning--in the early hours before the crowd turned out. The place was almost deserted, for the weather was raw and chilly; but there, by some supernatural interposition as I am convinced, whether benign or malignant only the passage of years can show, in a chair at the corner of the Row sat Oliver Kirby. I stopped before him and said “Hallo!” I had forgotten how entirely formal our previous acquaintance had been, perhaps because I had been thinking about him so much. He greeted me cordially, indeed gladly, as I fancied, and, when I objected to sitting in the chilly air, he proposed to share my walk. I mentioned the secretaryship, remarking that I understood it was a good thing for a man to get. He shrugged his shoulders, then turned to me, and said, with a sudden twinkle lighting up his eyes, “One might be able to keep our friend straight, perhaps.” “You think he needs it?” “It’s only a matter of time for that man to come a cropper. The first big affair he gets to handle, look out! I’m not prejudiced. He’s a very good fellow, and I like him--besides being amused at him. But what I say is true.” He spoke with an uncanny certainty. “What makes you say it?”