"That's just what it doesn't mean," he returned. "Mr. Trent says I am to tell Count Michæl he has not the treaty. If Trent had it he would have told me so. I am to do this risky thing in order that he may ultimately succeed. You see, Daphne, my statement to the press that I have decided to take office is part of a move in the game that another man is playing."
"But he's playing it for you," she cried.
The earl smiled.
"Is he?" he returned, "I'll admit at all events that I am the one most to be benefited if he succeeds."
"But he will succeed," she persisted. "Does he look like the kind of man to be beaten?"
"Did Captain Hardcastle look the kind of man either?" Lord Rosecarrel asked. "And you remember poor Piers Edgcomb the best fencer in Europe, a man with nerves of steel? I firmly believe some of the count's men killed him."
It cost the girl an effort to say what she did.
"But, dad," she reminded him, "they had no experience at, at that sort of thing."
"And this one has? That, alone, comforts me. But the odds are so tremendously against him."
"He went there knowing it."