“And I’ve sent in my resignation too,” she said. “Mr Wynne, try to think of me as only half a coward.” “I--I don’t understand,” I stammered. “But it’s your own doing,” he said. “Over there she won’t be a failure all her life!” “Not because I’ve married him, at any rate,” Katharine said, looking very happy. “I told you I should settle it--and so I did,” Kirby added. “And I’m grateful to you. I’m always grateful to a fellow who makes me understand.” “Good heavens!” I cried. “You’re not making me responsible?” “For all that follows!” she answered, with a merry laugh. “Yes!” That’s all very well, but suppose he gets to the top of the tree, as the fellow will, and issues a Declaration of Independence? At least he’ll be Premier, and come over to a conference some day. Val will be Secretary for the Colonies, probably (unless he has come that cropper). There’s a situation for you! Well, I shall just leave town. I daresay I sha’n’t be missed. Lady Lexington carried it off well. She said that, from a strain of romance she had observed in the girl, the marriage was just what was to be expected of Katharine Constantine. SLIM-FINGERED JIM I “What did he get? “I asked. I had been working in my own room all the morning and had not seen the papers--they arrived from London about half-past eleven. “Seven years’ penal servitude,” said our host the Major with grim satisfaction. “Stiff!” I commented. “Not a bit too much,” asserted the Major, helping himself to game pie again--he is a good luncher. “He’s a thoroughly bad lot--a professional thief, and a deuced clever one. It’s his first conviction, but it ought to have been his tenth, I should say.” “He was certainly in that big American bond robbery,” said Crookes, “though he got off that time. Oxford man, wasn’t he?” “Yes. In fact, I believe I was up one term with him,” said Millington. “I must have seen him, I think, but I can’t remember him.” “Dear, dear!” our hostess observed, shocked apparently at this close proximity to the criminal classes. “Rather good what the chap said when he’d been sentenced,” drawled Charlie Pryce. “See it? Well, he bowed to the judge, and then he bowed to the jury, and smiled, and shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘The risks of the profession, gentlemen! _Au revoir!_’ Jolly good cheek!” Charlie’s round red face--he is very well nourished, as they say at inquests--beamed almost sympathetically. “I suppose he owes his nickname to his professional dexterity?” said I. “Suppose so,” agreed Charlie. “No,” said Mrs Pryce, who was at the other end of the table. “His name is James----” “Yes, James Painter Walsh,” interposed the Major, accurate always. “But he was called ‘Slim-Fingered’ because he had beautiful hands with very slender tapering fingers.” “Hallo, Minnie!” cried Pryce. “How do you know that?”