"My dear Lilla, we can’t be too careful," he said, with a kindly smile. "Our business is a very ticklish one. Ena agrees with me that Annette, your maid, has picked up too much English, and in consequence is a danger." "Rubbish, my clear old Bernard!" laughed the handsome woman, upon whose fingers sparkled several valuable rings. "All that we need is to exercise due discretion." "I know. When the game is crooked one has to be all the more careful." "You don’t seem to be in the sweetest of tempers to-night," remarked his wife, rather piqued. His visit was unexpected, and to her it portended unpleasantness. Not because discord ever existed between them. On the contrary, they were bound together by certain secrets which neither one nor the other dared to disclose. Lilla Boyne feared her husband to exactly the same extent that he feared her. In that house in Pont Street, Mr. Boyne kept his well-cut suits, his evening clothes, his opera hat, and his expensive suit-case marked "B.B.," for on entry there he at once effaced his identity as the humble insurance agent, and became Bernard Braybourne, a man of means, and husband of the good-looking woman who in the course of five or six years had been taken up by quite a number of well-known people. "I didn’t expect you to-night," she remarked rather wearily. "I thought you’d have been here yesterday." "I couldn’t come. Sorry!" he replied. "To-night I went to dine at Lady Betty’s. You accepted, you know. So I apologised and said you had been called suddenly to Leeds last night," she said. "That idea of your candidature at Leeds at the next election works famously. You have to go and meet your committee, I tell them, and it always satisfies the curious. All of them hope you’ll get in at the by-election when old Sammie dies, as he must very soon. They say the doctors have only given him three months more." "Then before that date I’ll have to retire from the contest," remarked her husband, with a grin. "Oh! I’ll watch that for you all right. Have you got that cheque?" "Yes—to-day. It came from my new solicitor—seven thousand, eight hundred!" "Good! I’m glad they’ve paid up. I began to fear that there might be some little hitch. They were so long-winded." "So did I, to tell you the truth. But it’s all right, and the new lawyer, a smart young fellow in the City, suspects nothing. I’ve already sent him his fee—so that’s settled him." "Will you employ him again?" "I never employ a solicitor a second time, my dear Lilla. That would be a fatal mistake," was his reply. "But what I came to tell you mainly is that I’ve had a failure—a mysterious failure! Things haven’t turned out exactly as I expected they would." "Failure!" gasped the woman, with disappointment upon her dark, handsome face. "Then we must postpone it? How annoying!" "Yes. But perhaps it’s all for the best, Lilla. There was an element of danger. I told you that from the first."