Muriel Mortimer had interested him, just as a child sometimes interests the pedantic philosopher. He had found hers a frank, open, girlish nature, as yet unspoiled by its contact with the smart, well-dressed, vicious set into which the ambitious Lady Meldrum had seen fit to plunge her. He admired her as one standing apart from most of the women he knew, for she had displayed an intelligence and a knowledge of political affairs that surprised him. She, on her side, seemed to regard him rather fearfully, as one of the powers of the State. This amused him, and he assured her that he could not honestly claim to be more than the mouthpiece of the Foreign Office. Yes, she was as charming as she was ingenuous. And Claudia? He reflected upon all that he had said, and upon all her answers; yet somehow he could not make up his mind whether she were really false. When he recollected the quick passion of her caresses, the tenderness of her words, the gentle sympathy with which she had asked him to confide in her, he found it difficult to believe that she could actually forget him five minutes after leaving him in that ballroom, and waltz airily with the man with whose name her own was being everywhere coupled. To him, honest, upright man that he was, this seemed an absolute impossibility. He refused to believe it. Surely she loved him, in spite of her perplexing caprices; surely she had been seized by remorse for her own fickleness. He endeavoured to compare the two women, but the comparison caused him to start up in quick impatience. "No!" he cried aloud in a fierce voice. "A thousand times no! I love Claudia--no one else!--no one else in all the world!" Next day when he entered his room at Downing Street, Wrey, his secretary, put before him a quantity of documents requiring attention. He held the responsible office of superintending under-secretary of the Commercial Department of Her Majesty's Foreign Office, the business of which consisted of correspondence with our Ministers and Consuls abroad; with the representatives of the Foreign Powers in England, and with the Board of Trade and other departments of the Government. He had been absorbed in these papers for some hours, snatching only a few minutes for a glass of sherry and a biscuit at luncheon-time, when Wrey returned to remind him of a long-standing engagement that evening at the little town of Godalming, which was in his constituency, four miles from Albury. He glanced up from his writing and gave vent to a sharp ejaculation of annoyance. "Are you quite certain it is to-night?" he asked, for the reminder was to him a most unpleasant one. He avoided speaking in his constituency whenever he could. "Yes. I put it down in the diary a month ago--a dinner given by the Lodge of Odd Fellows in aid of a local charity."