They finished their meal happily, drank hot coffee from a thermos flask and smoked and talked. As on the first day he had sat beside her, so now, under the spell of her keen sympathy, he told her of all his doings. For the past two or three months they had been of absorbing interest. He had besieged the War Office, as he had gloriously threatened, until one day he received an appointment on the staff of the Director-General of Military Operations. That it was due to any other influence than his own furious and persistent attacks, he had not the remotest suspicion. He had dashed away from the amazing interview in a taxi to Lady Edna, whom by good chance he found at home, and vaunted his generalship. His father’s blood sang in his veins. The lady to whom, in close conspiracy with Lady Northby, he owed the billet coveted by thousands of men, wounded and whole, welcomed his news with the smiling surprise of a mother who listens to her offspring’s tale of the wondrous gifts of Santa Claus. It was one of the characteristics of Lady Edna Donnithorpe to love the secret meed of secret services, a far more subtle joy than the facile gratitude poured on a Lady Bountiful. Besides, such a reputation would in itself destroy her power. Many women of her acquaintance who had enjoyed it for a brief season during the war, had seen the sacred shoulders of Authority turned frozenly upon them. She was not one of those women acting from thoughtless impulse or vanity. The game of intrigue fascinated her; she knew her winnings and hoarded them; but they were the concern of no one in the wide world. Perhaps the time might come when she could say to Godfrey: “All that you are you owe to me. I have made you, and I have made your father. I can show you proofs. What are you going to do?” Blackmail of a kind, certainly. A woman driven up against a wall is justified in using any weapons of defence. But all this lay hidden in the self-protective instinct. No thought of it marred her triumph. She listened to his fairy-tales of the Allies’ war organization with a twofold pride. First, in this vicarious entrance into the jealously guarded Ark of the Covenant, whereby she gained exact knowledge of mighty happenings to come, denied even to the self-important Edgar. Secondly, in her unerring judgment of men. For Baltazar had told her a week before of his meeting with one of Godfrey’s chiefs, who had given the boy unreserved praise. Whereupon she herself had made it her week’s business to track the social doings of the great man until she ran him down a day or two ago at a friend’s house, and, in reply to her tactful questionings, he had replied: “Baltazar? Lots of brains. A brilliant fellow, with wonderful power of detail. Son of that astonishing chap John Baltazar, who has just come to life again, and everybody’s talking about. Oh, you needn’t be afraid. We have spotted him right enough.”