“Quite possible!” agreed Thord; “Only his offer of one hundred gold pieces a year to a man of intellect, is out of all proportion to the salary he pays his cook!” A slight flush reddened Leroy’s bronzed cheek. Thord observed him attentively, and saw that his soul was absorbed by some deep-seated intellectual irritation. He began to feel strangely drawn towards him; his eyes questioned the secret which he appeared to hold in his mind, but the quiet composure of the man’s handsome face baffled enquiry. Meanwhile around the table the conversation grew louder and less restrained. The young stockbroker’s clerk was holding forth eloquently concerning the many occasions on which he had seen Carl Pérousse at his employer’s office, carefully going into the closest questions of financial losses or gains likely to result from certain political moves,--and he remembered one day in particular, when, after purchasing a hundred thousand shares in a certain company, Pérousse had turned suddenly round on his broker with the cool remark--“If ever you breathe a whisper about this transaction, I will shoot you dead!” Whereat the broker had replied that it was not his custom to give away his clients’ business, and that threats were unworthy of a statesman. Then Pérousse had become as friendly as he had been before menacing; and the two had gone out of the office and lunched together. And the confidential clerk thus chattering his news, declared that his employer was now evidently uneasy; and that from that uneasiness he augured a sudden fluctuation or fall in what had lately seemed the most valuable stock in the market. “And you? Your news, Valdor,” cried one or two eager voices, while several heads leaned forward in the direction of the fiercely-moustached man who sat next to Lotys. “Where have you been with your fiddle? Do you arrive among us to-night infected by the pay, or the purple of Royalty?” Louis Valdor, by birth a Norseman, and by sympathies a cosmopolitan, looked up with a satiric smile in his dark eyes.