Sir Henry Wilberforce sat sipping his morning coffee in his most leisurely fashion by the table in his own private salon at the H?tel de l\'Allemagne in Rome. \'Capital man, this fellow Churchill,\' he said to himself approvingly, as he saw Colin close the door noiselessly behind him! \'By far the best person for the place I\'ve ever had since that fool Simpson went off so suddenly and got married, confound him. He\'s so quiet and unobtrusive in all his movements, and he talks so well, and has such a respectable accent and manner. Now Dobbs\'s accent was quite enough to drive a man wild. I always wanted to throw a boot at him—indeed I\'ve done it more than once—he was so utterly unendurable. This fellow, on the other hand, talks really just like a gentleman; in fact, the only thing I\'ve got to say against him, so far (there\'s always something or other turning up in the long run), the only thing I\'ve got to say against him yet, is that he\'s positively a deuced sight too gentlemanly and nice-looking and well-mannered altogether. A servant oughtn\'t to be too well-mannered. Why, that old Mrs. Cregoe, with the obvious wig and the powdered face, who sits at the table d\'hote nearly opposite me, actually went up and spoke to him in the passage yesterday, taking him for one of the visitors! Awkward, exceedingly awkward, when people mistake your man for your nephew, as she did! But otherwise, the fellow\'s really a capital servant. He—well, what the dickens do you want now, I wonder?\'

\'A signorina below wishes to speak with you, excellency,\' the Italian servant put in, bowing.

\'A signorina! What the deuce! Did she give her card, Agostino?\'

\'The signorina said you would not know her, signor. Shall I introduce her? Ah! here she is.\'

Sir Henry rose and made a slight stiff inclination, as who should say: \'Now what the devil can you want with me, I wonder?\' Gwen, nothing abashed, laid down her card upon the table, which Sir Henry then and there took up and looked at narrowly, putting on his eyeglass for the purpose.

\'What an ill-mannered surly old bear,\' Gwen thought to herself; \'and what an absurd thing that that delightful Mr. Churchill should have to go as the old wretch\'s valet. I shall take care to put a stop to that arrangement, anyhow.\'

\'Well,\' Sir Henry said, glancing suspiciously from the card to Gwen \'May I ask—ur—to what I owe the honour of this visit?\'

\'Oh, certainly,\' Gwen answered with perfect composure (she was never lacking in that repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere). \'But as it\'s rather a long story to tell, perhaps you\'ll excuse my sitting down while I tell it.\' And Gwen half took a chair herself, but at the same time half compelled Sir Henry to push it towards her also, with a sort of grudging unmannerly politeness. Sir Henry, after standing himself for a second or two longer, and then discovering that Gwen was waiting for him to be seated before beginning to disclose her business, dropped in a helpless querulous fashion into the small armchair opposite, and prepared himself feebly for the tête-à-tête.

\'The business I\'ve come about,\' Gwen went oft quietly, is a rather peculiar one. The fact is my father and I travelled to Rome the other day in the same railway carriage with your servant, whose name, he told us, is Colin Churchill.\'

Sir Henry nodded a non-committing acquiescence. \'The deuce!\' he thought to himself. \'Something or other turned up already against him.—I hope, I\'m sure, Miss—ur—let me see your card here once more—ur—Miss Howard-Russell—I hope, I\'m sure, he didn\'t in any way behave impertinently, or make himself at all disagreeable to you. You see, one\'s obliged to put one\'s servants into carriages with other people on these continental lines, which of course is very unpleasant for—ur—for those other people.\'

\'Not at all,\' Gwen answered with a charming smile, which almost melted even stony old Sir Henry. \'Not at all; quite the contrary, I assure you. His society and conversation were really quite delightful. Indeed, that\'s just what I\'ve come about.\'

Sir Henry wriggled uneasily in his chair, put up his eyeglass for the third time, and stared at Gwen in puzzled wonderment. His valet\'s society was really quite delightful! How extraordinary! Could this very handsome and quite presentable young woman—with a double-barrelled surname too—be after all nothing more than a lady\'s maid who had had a flirtation with his new valet? But if so, and if she had come to propose for Churchill, so to speak, what the deuce could she want to see him for? He dropped his eyeglass once more in silent dubitation, and merely muttered cautiously: \'Indeed!\'

\'Yes, very much so altogether,\' Gwen went on boldly, in spite of Sir Henry\'s freezing rigidity. \'The fact is, I wanted to speak to you about him, because, you know, really and truly, he isn\'t a valet at all, and he oughtn\'t to be one.\'

Sir Henry started visibly. \'Not a valet!\' he cried. \'Why, if it conies to that, I\'ve found him a very useful and capable person for the place. But I don\'t quite understand you. Am I to gather that you mean he\'s an impostor—a thief in disguise, or something of that sort? I picked him up, certainly, under rather peculiar circumstances, just because he could speak a little Italian.\'

Gwen laughed a little joyous ringing laugh. \'Oh, no!\' she said quickly, \'nothing of that sort, certainly. I meant quite the opposite. Mr. Churchill\'s a sculptor, and a very accomplished well-read artist.\'

Sir Henry rose from his chair nervously.

\'You don\'t mean to say so!\' he cried in surprise. \'You quite astonish me. And yet, now you mention it, I\'ve certainly noticed that the young man had a very gentlemanly voice and accent. And then his manners—quite unexceptionable. But what the deuce—excuse an old man\'s freedom of language—what the deuce, my dear madam, does he mean by playing such a scurvy trick upon me as this—passing himself off for an ordinary valet?\'

\'That\'s just what I\'ve come about, Sir Henry. He happened to mention your name to my father and myself, and to allude to the nature of his relations with you; and I was so much interested in the young man that I looked your name up in the visitors\' list in the “Italian Times,” and came round to speak to you about him.\'

Sir Henry raised his eyebrows slightly, but answered nothing.

\'And he\'s not playing you any trick; that\'s the worst of it,\' Gwen went on boldly, taking no notice of Sir Henry\'s indifferent politeness. \'He\'s poor, and he\'s a sculptor. He\'s been working for several years with a small Italian artist in the Marylebone Road.\'

\'Ah! yes, yes; I remember. He said he\'d been engaged as a marble-cutter since he left his last situation. Why, bless my soul, his last situation was with old Mr. Philip Howard-Russell, of Wootton Mandeville. Let me see—your card—ah! quite so. He must have been some relation of yours, I should imagine.\'

\'My uncle,\' Gwen answered, glancing up at him defiantly. To her the relationship was no introduction.

Sir Henry bowed again slightly. \'Excuse my stupidity,\' he said, with more politeness than he had hitherto shown. \'I ought of course to have recognised your name at once. I knew your uncle. A most delightful man, and a brother collector.—The selfish old pig,\' he thought to himself with an internal sneer; \'he was the most disagreeable bumptious old fellow I ever met in the whole course of my experience. Why, he pretended to doubt the genuineness of my Pinturicchio! But at least he was a man of good family, and his niece, in spite of the interest she evidently takes in my servant Churchill, is no doubt a person whom one ought to treat civilly.\' For Sir Henry was one of those ingenuous people who don\'t think there is any necessity at all for treating civilly that inconsiderable section of humanity which doesn\'t happen to be connected with men of good family.

\'Yes,\' Gwen went on, \'Mr. Churchill, as we learnt quite incidentally, was a long time since, when he was quite a boy, in my Uncle Philip\'s employment. But he has risen by his own talent since then, and now he\'s a sculptor: there\'s his card which he gave me, and he has described himself there correctly, as you see. Now, he\'s poor, it seems, and as he was very anxious to come to Rome, and could find no other way of coming, he decided to come here as a valet. Wasn\'t that splendid of him! You can see at once that such devotion to art shows what a very remarkable young man he must really be—you\'re a lover of art yourself, and so you can sympathise with him—to come away as a servant, so as to get to Rome and see the works of Michael Angelo, and Raphael, and—and—and—all that sort of thing, you know,\' Gwen added feebly, breaking down in her strenuous effort for a completion to her imagined trio.

Sir Henry hawed a moment. \'Well, \'he said slowly, \'I must confess I don\'t exactly agree with you that it was such a very splendid thing of him to palm himself off upon me as a servant in this abominable underhand manner. You\'ll excuse me, my dear madam, but it seems to me—I may be wrong, but it seems to me certainly—that a man\'s either a servant or a sculptor: confound it all, he can\'t very well be both together. If he comes to me and gets a place on the representation that he\'s a valet, and then goes and represents to you that he\'s a sculptor, why, in that case—in that case, I say, it\'s the very devil. You\'ll excuse my saying it, but hang me if I can see what there is after all so very fine or splendid about it.\'

Gwen bit her lip. \'If you\'d heard how beautifully he talked about art in the train,\' she said persuasively, \'and how much he knew about Millet and Thorwaldsen and the old masters, and how at home he was in all the great picture-galleries in England, you wouldn\'t be surprised that he should wish, by hook or by crook, to come to Italy. Why, he can talk quite charmingly and delightfully about—about—about Titian and Perugino and Caravaggio, and I\'m sure I don\'t know how many other great painters and people.\'

Sir Henry bent his head again in silent acquiescence. He remembered now that mysterious remark of Colin\'s, on the day of their first meeting, as to the rival Pinturicchio in the Knowle gallery. The woman was evidently right: that fellow Churchill was a bit of an artist, and had been quizzing his personal peculiarities for a whole fortnight, under cover of acting as valet. Now it\'s all very well for an enthusiastic young sculptor to go coming to Rome as a man-servant, in order to study Michael Angelo and Thorwald-sen, so long as he comes as somebody else\'s man-servant; but when he comes as one\'s own attendant, hang it all, you know, that\'s quite another matter. \'Well,\' Sir Henry said, looking curiously at Gwen\'s embarrassed face, \'and what do you wish to ask me about my man Churchill?\'

Gwen flushed up angrily at the obvious insolence of his inquiry, but she took no notice of it in words for the sake of her errand. \'I only called,\' she said quietly, \'though it\'s a little unusual for a lady to do so\' (Sir Henry inclined his head gravely once more, as who should say I quite agree with you), \'because I felt so much interested in Mr. Churchill. I think it isn\'t right to let him remain as a servant; he ought to be allowed to continue his work as a sculptor without delay. Sir Henry, you\'ll release him from his engagement, I\'m sure, and let him go on with his own proper studies.\'

\'Release him, my dear young lady,\' Sir Henry answered sardonically. \'Release him! release him! By Jove, that\'s hardly the word I should myself apply to it. I shall certainly send him packing, you may be sure, at the earliest convenient opportunity, and he may consider himself deuced lucky if I don\'t get him into serious trouble for engaging himself to me under what comes perilously near being false pretences. You must excuse my frankness, Miss Howard-Russell; but I\'m an old man, and I don\'t see why I should be left at a minute\'s notice here in Rome, at the mercy of these confounded foreigners, without a valet. After what you tell me, it\'s plain I can\'t have him here spying upon me all the time in every action; but it\'s devilish uncomfortable, I can tell you, to be left a thousand miles away from home without anybody on earth to do anything for one.\'

What could Gwen say? She felt instinctively in her own mind that Sir Henry\'s complaint was perfectly natural and excusable. When a man engages a man-servant, he means to engage a person of a certain comparatively fixed and recognisable social status, and he certainly............