At this moment the waiter appeared with a stone bottle and two Chinese cups. "Mr. Dougal sent this over with his compliments. It’s _saké_," he explained. Fancy kissed her hand to Dougal, and poured for herself and Cayley. "Ugh! It’s horrible!" she said. "Isn’t it?" "No, it’s the real thing; I like it." Cayley drank it all and helped himself to more. "Did you find out what you wanted to know?" said Fancy, proceeding with her dinner daintily. "No, the row came just in time to queer the whole thing." "Of course you know that if Dougal had had any idea it was me—" "Oh, it wasn’t Dougal, it was old man Payson—he caught on—" Fancy laid down her fork, and narrowed her eyes. "_Payson?_" she repeated. "Yes, of course; the old chap you were talking to, weren’t you?" She looked at him with a strange expression. "Payson? I didn’t think—I was too excited to realize—I mean—who is he, Blan?" Her hands fell into her lap and clasped one another tightly. "Oh, an old boy I know, a good sort, but a fool. No fool like an old fool, is there?" He poured another glass of chianti, without noticing how intense she had grown. His eyes were dallying with two good-looking girls across the room. "Is Miss Payson—the one who was with you at Carminetti’s—his daughter?" He looked up at her sharply, now, but her frown meant nothing to him. He returned to his tagliarini. "Yes—why?" he said. "Tell me about her, Blan, please," Fancy begged, with an unusual air of anxiety. "Nothing to tell, except she’s a disdainful beauty, and a little too haughty for me. Fastidious, pre-Raphaelite, and super-civilized and all that. You wouldn’t care for her, any more than you would for a Utamaro." He smiled to himself at what Fancy had once said of Japanese prints. "H’m!" Fancy put her chin in her hands, and kept her eyes on Cayley. "So that old gentleman was her father," she said in a low unimpassioned voice. "It was Miss Payson’s father I was hired to fool!" Suddenly she spoke up more sharply, but with a tremor in her voice. "What did you want me to play spirit for, Blan? Out with it!" He saw now that something was wrong. It made him peevish. "What do you know about Miss Payson, anyway?" he demanded. "I’ve—seen her." "Well, what did you think of her?" "I thought she was a thoroughbred." "Indeed?" Cayley thought it over, looking somewhat abstractedly at a picture on the wall, entitled: "_Je congnois la faulte des Boesmes._" Then he turned with an open countenance to her and said, with an air of candor: "You see, Fancy, I happened to know Payson was in the clutches of Vixley and this Spoll woman—they were sucking his blood. I thought I could rescue him if you would play spirit, and then tell Payson afterwards what a fraud it all was. Understand now?" He smiled blandly. "I see," she said, and went on with her dinner. "Then again," Cayley remarked, "I thought you wouldn’t mind getting even with Granthope."