He had folded his arms and was standing resolutely before me, gazing upon the dead green carpet deep in thought. "The mystery becomes daily more puzzling," he said at length, seating himself. "Tell me all that transpired between you." I sank into a chair opposite the renowned chief of the Foreign Office and repeated the conversation that had taken place at our interview, while he listened attentively without hazarding a single remark. "Then again she would tell you nothing," exclaimed the Earl, when I had concluded. "She refused absolutely to divulge her secret." "Yes," I said. "I promised to forgive if she would only tell me the truth. She refused; so we have parted." "And what do you intend doing?" "I intend to seek the truth for myself," I answered with fierce resolve. "How?" "I have not yet decided," I said. "The reason she took such infinite pains to conceal her identity is incomprehensible, but her firm resolution to preserve her secret at all hazards appears as though she is in deadly fear of exposure by some person or other who can only be conciliated by absolute silence." "Then we must discover who that person is." I nodded, answering:--"I intend to do so." Presently, after he had crossed and recrossed the room several times with hands behind his back, murmuring to himself in apparent discontent, but in tones that were undistinguishable, I turned to him saying,-- "As I entered, a visitor left you. Who is he?" "Cecil Bingham. He is staying with me for a few days." "A friend?" "Well--yes," answered his Lordship, halting, and regarding me with no little surprise. "What do you know of him?" At first I hesitated, but on reflection resolved to explain the circumstances in which we had met, and slowly related to him how I had encountered him with my wife in Kensington Gardens on that well-remembered wintry afternoon. The Earl grew grave, and after observing that Bingham had arrived on the previous day to spend a week, he for some moments stood looking aimlessly out of the window upon the broad park and the great sheet of water glistening in the sunlight beyond. Then, muttering something I could not catch, he walked quickly back to the fireplace, and touched the electric bell. "Ask Mr Bingham to see me for a moment," he exclaimed, when the man answered the summons, and in a few minutes the Earl's guest came in with that affected jaunty air that had caused me to class him as a cad. When he had entered, the Earl himself walked to the door and softly closed it, then, turning, said in a hard, dry voice,-- "This, Cecil, is my secretary, Deedes, the husband of the woman known as Ella Laing, with whom you have, I understand, been in correspondence, and have met clandestinely on many occasions." "What do you mean?" he cried, resentfully, glancing from the Earl to myself. "I know no one of that name. You are mistaken."