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the matter. We hadn’t a single thing to threaten her with, either. Her charity was entirely voluntary.”
    “You haven’t made your bows yet, and if the Queen hears of your doings, you never will.”
    “I have come to place little reliance on your lovely threats. Surely no one would be so surly as to go whispering malicious gossip into Her Majesty’s ears.”
    “I must confess I am looking forward to the publishing of this book. Your aunt must have some racy stories to be flying so high.”
    “Yes, an interesting compendium of adultery, gambling, and so on—all the more amusing pastimes. But at the rate people are coming up to scratch, I begin to fear the whole will be comprised of one chapter, entitled Sir Lawrence Thyrwite. A pity, too, for it promises to be the dullest chapter of the lot.”
    “That is why I am come.”
    “You would like us to enliven it with a little fiction? I cannot think that would meet with Auntie’s approval. Someone—I forget exactly who it was—has spoken to us about libel, and we mean to tell no more than the simple truth.”
    “Your solicitor, perhaps, was the one who mentioned it.”
    “Some disagreeable person of that sort,” she agreed, smiling.
    “I am here to discuss Sir Lawrence, not listen to insults.”
    “Ah, I was beginning to mistake it for a social call. I had thought from your delightfully entertaining conversation you were come to take a glass of wine with me, Your Grace.” Her lips remained steady, but her eyes were full of mocking laughter.
    His blood quickened, and a dangerous flash shot forth from his eyes. “What do you mean to do about it?”
    “I am completely reasonable and mean to listen to what you have to suggest. I hear Sir Lawrence is rising in the world—a folio in Liverpool’s Cabinet is spoken of. Still, I suppose one’s physical appearance is of no importance in that. Liverpool himself looks a good deal like a hippopotamus.”
    “What I suggest is that you pack your bags and return home before you are found out.”
    “Found out? The whole town knows what foul deeds we are up to. There is no keeping it secret when the line of victims extends from Upper Grosvenor Square to Whitehall.”
    “You will not find me in the line-up.”
    “I wonder that I find you in my aunt’s saloon, to tell the truth, after your expressing no desire to return. Why is it Sir Lawrence does not come to do his own haggling?”
    “He does not wish to.”
    “Now that is the very sort of behaviour that gives Auntie a disgust of her victims. Top lofty. He wants a good raking down.”
    “You persist, then, in demanding some payment to withhold the story?”
    “If you will but consider, Your Grace, we have never demanded a thing of you or Sir Lawrence. You came of your own free will to berate us and try to push money down our throats. Five hundred wasn’t enough—you had to double it, and the insult. We returned the cheque with a very civil note, pretending we were not hurt and that there was some misunderstanding. But these repeated incursions upon our privacy are making us quite short-tempered with the pair of you.”
    “When you set upon a course of this sort, you must be prepared for some unpleasantness.”
    “True, but we had not thought the unpleasantness would come from someone we had not approached with our vile scheme. We had not thought people so eager to be blackmailed that they would come barging in twice, demanding the privilege of paying up.”
    “I am here to tell you we have no intention of paying a sou."
     “No one asked you to pay a thing, but your obvious fear of what we might say makes me wonder whether I haven’t missed a chapter of the memoirs. I begin to think there is something Auntie is keeping from me. I shall go through the books with a fine-tooth comb and see if I have missed something.”
    “No, I don’t think you miss a trick.”
    She laughed aloud and said in a warning voice, “Bear it in mind, Your Grace.”
    “Don’t