* * * * *
"Do we receive our deserts in this world?" some one asked one night, when our dinner table at Saxby was like a suggestion of old times—and we all paused to think.
"Staunton has a peerage," Adèle remarked.
"Luckier than I," Guest laughed; only he called himself Guest no longer, but Lord Leslie Wendover. "My past disgrace had to be wiped out by an invitation to Windsor and a ribbon. Such are the ways of diplomacy, which never dare own a mistake."
"The amazing denseness of the man!" his wife murmured. "Do I count for nothing?"
He bent and touched her hand with his lips, as Adèle leaned forward and laughed at me across the table.
"I think," she said; "that you both deserve—what you got—us!"
End of Project Gutenberg's The Great Secret, by E. Phillips Oppenheim