“But I don't,” said Tony, bluntly.
“It means being bullied, being jockeyed, being outmanoeuvred, laughed at by Brennier, and derided by Caraffa. Mecklam's an ass, Tony, that 's the fact, and they know it at the Office, and I'm sent out to steer the ship.”
“But what do you know about Naples?”
“I know it just as I know the Ecuador question,—just as I know the Month of the Danube question,—as I know the slave treaty with Portugal, and the Sound dues with Denmark, and the right of search, and the Mosquito frontier, and everything else that is pending throughout the whole globe. Let me tell you, old fellow, the others—the French, the Italians, and the Austrians—know me as well as they know Palmerston. What do you think Walewski told Lady Pancroft the day Cavour went down to Vichy to see the Emperor? They held a long conversation at a table where there were writing-materials, and Cavour has an Italian habit of scribbling all the time he talks, and he kept on scratching with a pen on a sheet of blotting-paper, and what do you think he wrote?—the one word, over and over again, Skeff, Skeff,—nothing else. 'Which led us,' says Walewski, 'to add, Who or what was Skeff? when they told us he was a young fellow'—these are his own words—'of splendid abilities in the Foreign Office;' and if there is anything remarkable in Cavour, it is the way he knows and finds out the coming man.”
“But how could he have heard of you?”
“These fellows have their spies everywhere, Tony. Gortchakoff has a photograph of me, with two words in Russian underneath, that I got translated, and that mean 'infernally dangerous'—tanski serateztrskoff, infernally dangerous!—over his stove in his study. You 're behind the scenes now, Tony, and it will be rare fun for you to watch the newspapers, and see how differently things will go on at Naples after I arrive there.”
“Tell me something about home, Skeffy; I want to hear about Tilney. Whom did you leave there when you came away?”
“I left the Lyles, Alice and Bella,—none else. I was to have gone back with them to Lyle Abbey if I had stayed till Monday, and I left them, of course, very disconsolate, and greatly put out.”
“I suppose you made up to Alice. I thought you would,” said Tony, half sulkily.
“No, old fellow, you do me wrong; that's a thing I never do. As I said to Ernest Palfi about Pauline Esterhazy, I 'll take no unfair advantage,—I 'll take no steps in your absence; and Alice saw this herself.”