own frankness? Ah, observe that beautiful line traced by that skein of starlings!"

Jack looked up.

"Lovely!" he said. "Pray speak."

"It is this then. My honest belief is that there are immense fortunes to be made in West Australian mining. I believe also, again with absolute honesty, that these claims which I own are—some of them, at least, extremely rich. Now, I wish very much that I was wealthy enough to work them by myself. I regret to say that I am not. I must therefore form a company. To form a company I must have directors."

"Surely your name——" began Conybeare politely, but with only the faintest conjecture of what might be coming.

"My name, as you so kindly suggest, will no doubt be a little assistance," said Alington, "for I am not wholly unknown in such matters. But it is not enough. This Company must be English; it must be formed here; the shareholders should be largely English. Why? For a variety of reasons. In the first place, you can raise ten thousand pounds here more easily than you can raise one thousand in Australia. Again, the British public is getting ready to go mad about West Australian mining, while in Australia they regard Australian mining without, well, without any premonitory symptoms of insanity. Perhaps they underrate its future; I think they do. Perhaps the British public overrates it; that also is possible. But I bring my wares to the best market. Now I ask you, Lord Conybeare, will you be on my board? Will you be my chairman?"

He turned briskly round with the first quick movement that Conybeare had yet seen him make.

"I," he asked, "on a board of mining directors? I know about mines exactly what you told me, last night—that is to say, unless I have forgotten some of it."

The ghost of a smile flickered across Mr. Alington's broad face, and he laid his large white hand on Jack's knee. The latter seemed to regard it just as he might have regarded a harmless moth that had settled there. The poor thing did not hurt.

"You saw that I smiled," he said. "I saw that you saw it. I smiled because you spoke so far from the point. That is frank enough, is it not, to show you that I am telling you the truth. There are further proofs also."

Both in his action with his hand and in his speech the plebeian showed plain, but Jack did not resent it. He had not asked Alington down to the cottage to enjoy his refined conversation and his well-bred presence, but to talk business. That he was doing. Jack was quite pleased with him.

"I do not follow you," he said.

Mr. Alington lit another cigarette from the stump of his old one before replying, and rose to deposit the other out of sight in a garden-bed.

"Cigarette-ends are so terribly dissonant with this charming garden," he said. "Now, I am speaking to you from a purely business point of view. I supposed—it was natural, was it not?—that you were so kind as to ask me to your delightful house in order to discuss these mines. You see how frank I am."

Conybeare let his eye travel slowly down a reach of the Thames.

"Yes, that was the reason why I asked you," he said.

"And I came for exactly the same reason. The pleasure of visiting you at your 'cottage,' as Lady Conybeare so playfully calls it, is great—very great; but plain business-men like me have little time for such pleasures. Frankly, then, I should not have come unless I guessed your reason. I, too, wished to talk about these mines, Lord Conybeare, and I ask you again to be a director on my board."

He took off his straw hat—for they were sitting in the shade—and propped it carefully up against his chair by the side of the large tune hymn-book. Its removal showed a high white forehead and a circular baldness in the centre of flossy, light-brown hair, like a tonsure.

"I am a plain business man," he went on, "and when I am engaged in business I do not offer an advantageous thing to others unless I get an advantage myself; for to introduce sentiment into business is to make a pleasure of it and a failure. You must remember, my dear Lord Conybeare, that England is essentially aristocratic in her ideas. At least, so far as your nobility is Conservative, she is aristocratic. Think if Lord Salisbury joined a board how the public would clamour for allotments! Dear me, yes, the master of Hatfield might be a very rich man—a very rich man indeed."

Jack Conybeare was completely himself; he was not dazzled or unduly delighted at the offer. He merely wished to know what he got by it, taking for granted, and justly, that the man was sincere.

"Marquises still count, then," he said. "I give you my word I had no idea of it. I am glad I am a marquis. But what," he added, "do I get by it?"

"A salary," said Mr. Alington, and his usual pause gave the remark considerable weight. "But we will pass over that," he went on. "Directors, however, have the privilege of taking a great many shares before the concern is made public. In fact, in order to qualify for being a director, you must hold a considerable number."

"I am very poor," said Jack.

"That, fortunately, can be remedied," said Mr. Alington.

Jack was immensely practical, and very quick, and it was obvious at once that this was capable of two interpretations. He took the right one.

"You mean it is a certainty for me?" he said.

Again Mr. Alington let a perceptible pause intervene before he answered.

"I mean this," he said, "if you want plain speaking, and I think you do; it also suits me better. You shall be allotted a certain number of shares, say ten thousand, in my new group of mines. You will probably only have to pay the first call. You will be a director of these mines—and, by the way, there is another name I have in my mind, the owner of which I should also like to have on my board. I had the pleasure of seeing him at your house in London. Very well, I issue my prospectus, and my name, as you so kindly observed, counts for something. I, of course, as vendor, shall join the board after allotment. Yours and another I hope will be there too. Now, I feel certain in my own mind that such a board (with certain other names, which shall be my affair) will be advantageous to me. It will pay. I am certain also—I say this soberly—that between my prospectus and my board the shares will at once go up, so that if you choose you can sell out before the second call. Thus you will not be without your advantage also. We do no favour to each other; we enter into partnership each for his own advantage."

"And my duties?" asked Jack.

"Attendance, regular attendance at the meetings of the company. On those occasions I shall want you to take the chair, read the report of the manager, if there is one to hand, make the statement of the affairs of the company, and congratulate the shareholders."

"Or condole?" asked Jack.

"I hope not. I should also ask you to immediately approach Lord Abbotsworthy, and ask him to be on the board. His is the other name I mentioned."

"Whatever do you want Tom Abbotsworthy for?" asked Conybeare surprisedly.

"For much the same reason as I want you. He is already an earl—he will be a duke. Dear me, if I was not a man of business I should choose to be a duke."

Jack pondered a moment.

"It is your own concern," he said. "I will ask him with pleasure, and I think very probably he will consent. Oddly enough, he and I were talking about this sudden interest in West Australia only yesterday morning."

"I think that many other people will be talking of it before long," said Alington.

"I consent," said Jack.

Mr. Alington showed neither elation, relief, nor surprise. But he paused.

"I think you will find it