“We part as--as friends, I hope? Gyula,” as Count Temeszy paused near them, in the course of an impatient promenade up and down the room, “I am venturing to ofter Count Mortimer a seat in your carriage. We might drive him to his hotel.” “With the greatest pleasure,” said Count Temeszy, in hopeless bewilderment, and presently the servants were edified to behold Count Mortimer seated beside the Hercynian Chancellor in their master’s carriage, and not only escorted up the steps of the hotel by the man who had denounced him that morning as a pervert to Judaism, but fervently embraced at parting. As for Cyril himself, it did not surprise him in the least to receive, a week later, a cipher telegram from the Chevalier Goldberg to the following effect:-- “Hercynian opposition suddenly withdrawn, after various attempts to out-manœuvre us in matter of Anatolian concession. Fear secrecy is now at an end, for business has become known to English journalist. Suspect Hercynian Embassy at Czarigrad of communicating news, hoping to rouse Scythia to action.” “So!” murmured Cyril to himself, in the long-drawn, meditative German fashion, as he translated the cipher. “Then the battle is beginning in earnest. That is a smart dodge of yours, my dear Baron, to set Scythia on our track, knowing that we can’t hope to bring the matter home to you. I suppose the English papers all revelled in a nice little sensation yesterday. Mr Mansfield!” Cyril was sitting in the balcony belonging to his _appartement_ in the Hôtel Waldthier at Ludwigsbad, and a young man came hurriedly to the window in answer to his summons. There was nothing in any way remarkable about the new secretary’s appearance--at least to an English eye. Brown-haired and hazel-eyed, tall, broad-shouldered, and carelessly dressed, he would have been passed over at home as “a most ordinary-looking man,” but on the Continent it was his fate to attract attention as a typical Englishman wherever he went. “Have you found anything in the papers about our business?” Cyril asked him. “I was just going to bring your Excellency this.” Mansfield tendered a Vindobona evening journal to his employer. “Just read me the paragraph. And by the way, don’t ‘Excellency’ me in private. The King was good enough to continue me in the use of the title when I left Thracia, but it may be kept for state occasions. And don’t call me ‘sir,’ as you have done once or twice, or it will get about that I am arrogating to myself princely honours. I must ask you to address me as ‘Count,’ if your instinctive veneration for me demands the use of some epithet.” The reproof was given so genially that it was impossible to take offence, and Mansfield, who had grown very red, returned gradually to his normal colour, and translated the paragraph with very fair fluency:--