He was touched to the quick by hearing her say: 'You ask for Cabinet secrets, uncle. All secrets are holy, but secrets of State are under a seal next to divine.'
Next to divine! She was the mouthpiece of his ruling principle.
'I 'm not, prying into secrets,' Quintin persisted; 'all I want to know is, whether there 's any foundation for that article—all London's boiling about it, I can tell you—or it's only newspaper's humbug.'
'Clearly the oracle for you is the Editor's office,' rejoined Dacier.
'A pretty sort of answer I should get.'
'It would at least be complimentary.'
'How do you mean?'
'The net was cast for you—and the sight of a fish in it!'
Miss Asper almost laughed. 'Have you heard the choir at St. Catherine's?' she asked.
Dacier had not. He repented of his worldliness, and drinking persuasive claret, said he would go to hear it next Sunday.