He had risen to stir the fire when the stillness was suddenly broken by the sharp ring of the telephone-bell outside the room. A moment later Parsons announced that some one desired to speak with him. As it was no uncommon occurrence for him to be rung up in the middle of the night by the Foreign Office officials, he walked up to the instrument and inquired who was there. "Is that you, Dudley?" asked the soft voice he knew so well. "I called this afternoon, and I've been waiting for you ever since half-past two, when the House rose. You've had my note, of course. Why don't you come? Justine will open the door to you. I know it's very indiscreet, but I must see you to-night on an important matter--at once. Do you understand, Dudley?" CHAPTER THREE. IN WHICH DUDLEY CHISHOLM IS FRANK. The mellow autumn sunlight streamed full into the bright morning-room at Albert Gate where Dudley Chisholm was standing before the great wood-fire with his hands behind his back. It was a handsome apartment, solidly furnished and fully in keeping with the rest of the rooms in the huge mansion, which was acknowledged to be one of the finest in the West End. Before him, nestling in the cosy depths of her luxurious chair, sat its owner, young, dark-haired, with soft languorous eyes, her long and radiant tresses bound carelessly and hanging in as loose and rippled a luxuriance as the hair of the _Venus a la Coquille_. No toilette was more becoming than her pale blue _neglige_ of softest Indian texture, with its profusion of chiffon about the arms and bosom, a robe the very negligence of which was the supreme perfection of art; no _chaussure_ more shapely than the little Cairene slipper fantastically broidered with gold and pearls, into which the tiny foot she held out to the fire to warm was slipped. At that moment, perhaps, Claudia Nevill, who was exquisitely beautiful at all hours, looked her freshest and loveliest. She sat there thinking, while the sunbeams shone on the dazzling whiteness of her skin, on the luminous depths of her wonderful eyes, on her loosely bound tresses, and on the plain gold circlet on her fair left hand--the badge of her alliance with a dead lord and the signet of her title to reign a Queen of Society.