The marquis smiled grimly.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “She”—and he indicated Lady Grace with a slight motion of his hand—“knows, or guesses, all about it. We neither of us have any desire to rob you of the credit of the plot, eh, Grace?”
She shrugged her snowy shoulders with an air of indifference, but she could not keep her eagerness from flashing in her eyes, which were fixed on Spenser Churchill’s smooth, smiling face.
“Well, if you ask my advice, I should say dear Cecil might as well come back; not quite directly, but say—yes—say, in a week.”
The marquis raised his eyebrows with haughty indifference.
“When you like! There is a letter from him to-night.” and he flung it on the table. “He seems to have unmasked the agent, and made himself quite popular with his dear friends, the great unwashed! I suppose”—with a sneer—“he will want to go into Parliament next, on the Radical side, no doubt.”
“Y—es,” murmured Spenser Churchill, as he read the letter; “I always said dear Cecil was clever.”
“Really?” said the marquis, in a tone of calm and indifferent surprise. “The problem with me has always been whether he was a greater fool than he looked, or looked a greater fool than he is.”
Mr. Spenser Churchill chuckled oilily, but Lady Grace half rose, and shut her fan with a snap.
“He who buys Cecil for a fool will lose his money,” she said.