"That's why he sits in that room. He's the chief Whip." And shaking hands with Rames Mr. Smale abruptly returned to the House. The gist of the conversation with Smale Rames told to Cynthia in the reception-room at the Admiralty, and she listened with a growing interest. Then once more his note changed. He spoke with a boyish enthusiasm of his aims. To force an entrance into that arena; the entrance gained, to fight himself into the station of a great man; ultimately to govern and exercise authority--the note of personal ambition rose to a pitch of exultation in his voice. Of principles he obviously had no care, theories of politics were to him of no account. He was the political adventurer pure and simple. Cynthia sat with her eyes of dark blue clouded, and a real disappointment at her heart. She raised her face to his, and a little smile trembled upon her lips, and even her voice shook ever so slightly. "You have been very honest to me about it all," she said. "I thank you for that." Captain Rames was a trifle bewildered. He could not see that he had anything to conceal. "Good-night," she said as she rose, "I see my friend Mrs. Royle waiting for me." She gave him her hand and moved away for a few steps and then stopped. Harry Rames was at her side before she had stopped. She turned to him timidly with the blood mounting very prettily into her cheeks. "I suppose," she said, "that your journey to the South really counts now for very little in your thoughts. Yet you must have had a great many wishes for your success sent to you from all parts of the world before you started. I wonder you can forget them all, and leave that work unfinished." It seemed to Captain Rames that she had hit upon a rather far-fetched argument to persuade him to a second journey to the South. "Well, I am getting a good many wishes for my success now, and I hear them spoken," he said with a smile. "It is true that I got all sorts of messages and telegrams before I sailed to the South. But to tell you the truth I was rather too busy to read them. I have got them all tied up somewhere in a brown-paper parcel." Cynthia seemed actually to flinch. She turned away abruptly. "I wanted to ask of you a favor," said Rames. "Mr. Benoliel said that you lived near Ludsey. You could do a great deal if you would help me. Will you?" Cynthia turned back to him, her eyes shone angrily, the blood came into her cheeks in a rush. "No," she said decisively, and without another word she walked away. "I might have struck her," thought Captain Rames. He knew nothing of a telegram from the Daventry estancia which lay forgotten in that brown-paper parcel.