"Oh, that's admitted," laughed the secret agent. "Why, he can't go to his castle at Corfu for a week--as he does each spring--without some wonderful relic of Greek antiquity being unearthed in his presence. It is whispered that they sow them there in winter, just as the brave Belgians sow the bullets on the battlefield of Waterloo. To-day we are a.s.suredly living on the edge of a volcano," Jerningham went on. "When the eruption takes place--and who knows when it will--then, at that hour, the red-tape must be burst asunder, the veil torn aside, and the bitter truth faced--the bubble of British bombast will, I fear, be p.r.i.c.ked."

"You are always such a confounded pessimist, my dear Jack," laughed Waldron.

"Ah, Hubert, I'm a pessimist because I am always on the move from capital to capital and I learn things as I go," was Jerningham's quick reply. "You fellows at the Emba.s.sies sit down and have a jolly good time at b.a.l.l.s, dinners, tea-fights, and gala performances. Why?

Because you're paid for your job--paid to remain ignorant. I'm paid to learn. There's the little difference."

"I admit, my dear fellow, that without your service we should be altogether a back number. To your department is due the credit of knowing what is going on in the enemy's camps."

"I should think so. I don't pay out ten thousand a year, more or less, without getting to know something, I can tell you."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE GREAT GHELARDI.

While Waldron and his friend were discussing matters, shouts suddenly arose everywhere--the golden pig had entered and was being touched for luck by everyone, and men raised their gla.s.ses to each other, to wish one another "A Happy New Year." The Christian year had opened, but the Egyptians in fezes only smiled and acknowledged the compliment. Their year had not yet commenced.

"Well," exclaimed Jack Jerningham at last. "You haven't told me much about Beatriz."

"Why should I, my dear fellow, when there's nothing to tell?"

"Ah, I'm glad to hear that," was his friend's quick response, apparently much relieved, for the fascination of the handsome ballerina for Hubert Waldron was the gossip of half the Emba.s.sies of Europe. Hubert was a rising man, the son of a great diplomat, but that foolish infatuation would, if continued, most certainty stand in the way of his advancement.

Many of his friends, even the Amba.s.sador's wife, had given him broad hints that the friendship was a dangerous one. Yet, unfortunately, he had not heeded them.

Every man who is over head and ears in love thinks that his adored one is the perfect incarnation of all the virtues. Even when Waldron had heard her discussed in the Casino, that smart club in the Calle de Alcata, he refused to credit the stories told of her, of the magnificent presents she received from admirers, and more especially from the favoured one, the septuagenarian Duke of Villaneuva y Geltru.

"Why are you so glad to hear it?" Hubert asked, his brow slightly knit, for after all it was a sore subject.

"Well, to tell you the truth, because there is so much gossip flying about."

"What gossip?"

"Of course you know quite well. Why ask me to repeat it, old chap?"

"But I don't," was the other's reply.

"Well," exclaimed Jerningham after a pause, "perhaps you are, after all, like most men--you close your ears to the truth because you love her."

"Yes, Jack, I admit it. I do love her."

"Then the sooner you realise the actual truth, the better," declared the other with almost brutal abruptness.

"What truth?"

"My dear fellow, I know--nay, everybody knows--your foolish, quixotic friendship with the girl. You love her, and naturally you believe her to be all that is your ideal. But I a.s.sure you she's not."

"How in the name of Fate can you know?" asked the diplomat, starting up angrily.

"Well--I've been in Spain a lot, remember. I've seen and heard things.

Why, only a week ago in this very hotel I met old Zeigler, of the German Emba.s.sy at Madrid, and he began to discuss her."

"And what did he say, pray?"

"What everybody else says, that--well, forgive me for saying so--but that you are a fool to continue this dangerous friendship with a woman whose notoriety has now become European."

"Why should people interest themselves in my affairs?" he cried in angry protest.

"Who knows? It's the same the world over. But I suppose you know that Beatriz has gone to London with the old Duke?"

"It does not surprise me. She asked me to accompany her and to introduce her, but I couldn't get back from here in time."

"She asked you, well knowing that you were tied by the leg--eh?" laughed Jack. "Well, my dear fellow," he sighed, "I think you're terribly foolish to continue the acquaintanceship. It can only bring you grief and sorrow. Think of what she was, and what she is now. Can any girl rise from obscurity in such a short time without the golden ladder? Ask yourself."

"You need not cast ugly insinuations," was Hubert's angry retort, yet truth to tell, that fact had ever been in his mind--a suspicion the first seeds of which had been sown one night in the Casino Club, and which had now grown within his heart.

"Please forgive me if I've hurt your feelings, but we're old friends and you know how very blunt I am. It's my failing," he said in a tone of apology. "But the name of the fair Beatriz has of late been coupled with half a dozen admirers. When I was in Madrid four months ago I heard that Enrique de Egas, the director of the opera, was her very intimate friend, and also that young Juan Ordonez had given her a pearl necklace worth eighteen thousand pounds, while there were whispers concerning Pedro de Padras, Conrado Giaquinto, Sanchez Ferrer and several other nuts of the Spanish n.o.bility with whom you are acquainted.

They laugh at you behind your back."

"Yes," Hubert responded, quite undisturbed. "But surely you know that it gratifies the vanity of those young bloods of Madrid if their names are coupled with that of a pretty woman. It is the same in Vienna, the same in Rome."

"Ah, my dear fellow, I see you are hopelessly in love," declared the other. "I was--once. But the scales fell from my eyes just in time, as I sincerely hope they will fall from yours."

Waldron remained silent. In his pocket lay a letter which he had received only that morning from Beatriz, dated from the Carlton Hotel in London, a letter full of expressions of undying affection, and of longing to be again at his side.

Were those her true sentiments, he wondered? Had Jack Jerningham, on the other hand, told him the bitter truth? He had first met her a couple of months after her arrival in Madrid when she, poor and simply dressed, was dancing at the Trianon, and as yet unknown. Young Regan, one of the attaches, had introduced her, and the trio had had supper together at Lhardy's, in the Carrera de San Jeronimo, and on the following day he had taken her for a drive in the El Retero, the beautiful park of Madrid, and afterwards to the Plaza de Toros where the famous Sevilian Espada Ricardo Torres, known to all Spain as "Bombita,"

dispatched five bulls after some marvellous _pases de pecho, redondos_ and _cambiados_ before giving the _estocada_, or death-blow.

He remembered the hot afternoon and the breathless tension of the mult.i.tude as "Bombita" with his red cloth met the rush of the infuriated bull, stepped nimbly aside and then plunged his sword downwards through the animal's neck into its heart. Then came the roar of wild applause in which his dark-haired companion joined with such enthusiasm that her cheeks glowed red with excitement.

In that crowded bar, thick with tobacco smoke and noisy with the laughter of well-dressed men, the beautiful face of the dancer who, since that blazing well-remembered day, had won fame all over Europe, rose before him in the mists. Did he really love her, he asked himself as Jack Jerningham sat at his side, now smoking in silence. Yes he did, alas! he did.

And yet how strange--how very foolish, after all. He, Hubert Waldron, who for years had lived the exotic social life of diplomacy, who, being a smart, handsome man, had received the smiles and languishing glances of a thousand women of all ages, had fallen in love with that girl of the people--the daughter of a drunken dock labourer.

His friend Jerningham watched him covertly and wondered what was pa.s.sing in his mind.

"I hope I haven't offended you, Waldron," he ventured to exclaim at last. "Perhaps I ought not to have spoken so frankly."

"Oh, you haven't offended me in the least, my dear old chap," was the other's open reply. "I may have been a fool. Probably I am. But tell me frankly are you really certain that all these stories concerning Beatriz have any foundation in fact?"

"Any foundation?" echoed the other, staring at him with his blue eyes.

"You have only to go about the capital with your ears open, and you will hear stranger and more scandalous stories than those. There is the husband, you know, the cab-driver, who threatened the Duke with divorce, and has been paid a hundred thousand pesetas as hush-money."

"Is that a fact?" gasped his friend. "Are you quite certain of it? I can't really believe it."

"I'm quite certain of it. Ask Carreno, the advocate in the Calle Mayor.

He made the payment, and told me with his own lips. The story is common property all over Madrid."

Waldron's countenance changed, but he made no reply.