"Well, I know that you still live in Mount Street, that you married Jack Hargrave, who was never supposed by his friends to have any visible means of subsistence. Also that at one time, you were a great friend of Guy Rossett, the man who has just been appointed to Madrid." "Oh, then you know Guy Rossett?" "No," answered Moreno quietly. "I don't move in such exalted circles. But I always hear of what is going on in high society, through my influential friends." She looked at him quizzically. "Have you many influential friends?" she asked, with just a touch of sarcasm in her pleasant, low-pitched voice. A slight flush dyed Moreno's swarthy cheek at what he considered her impertinent question. "More perhaps than you would think possible," he answered stiffly. She read in his nettled tone that she had wounded his _amour propre_. She hastened to make amends. She was always a little too prone to speak without reflection. "Oh please don't think I meant to be rude. But we soldiers of fortune, and all of us here are that, are not likely to have many friends in high places." The journalist paid her back in her own coin. "Not real friends, of course. But still, we swim about in many cross currents. You yourself have a certain position in a certain section of what we might call semi-smart society." Violet Hargrave laughed good-humouredly. She was liberal-minded in this respect, that she seldom resented a thrust at herself when she had been the aggressor. "Very neatly put. I have no illusions about my actual position. I am not sure that my particular circle is even semi-smart, except in its own estimation." So peace was restored between them, and they chatted gaily together during the progress of the meal. She had taken a great liking to the brainy young journalist. And Moreno, on his side, was forced to admit that she was a very attractive woman. The grave and dignified Maceda, looking more like a nobleman than the proprietor of an obscure restaurant, came up a few times, and talked in confidential whispers with the principal guests. He chatted longest with Lucue and the handsome young Frenchwoman, Valerie Delmonte, who, Moreno learned afterwards, stood high in the councils and the estimation of the society. After dinner, the waiters withdrew, the men smoked, and the two ladies produced dainty cigarette cases. Then the business of the evening began. The genial Lucue, who looked the least ferocious of anarchists, opened the proceedings. He gave a brief but lucid survey of what was going on abroad, of the methods by which the great gospel of freedom was being spread in different capitals. The young Frenchwoman, Valerie Delmonte, who had dined well on the most expensive viands, delivered a fiery and passionate harangue against the great ones of the earth, the parasites and bloodsuckers who existed on the toil of their poorer brethren.