CHAPTER XIV.
"Sir Justin," said the Countess firmly, "please tell my daughter exactly what you have discovered." Sir Justin Wallingford sat in the drawing-room at Belgrave Square with one of these ladies on either side of him.

He was a tall, gaunt man with a grizzled black beard, a long nose, and such a formidably solemn expression that ambitious parents were in the habit of wishing that their offspring might some day be as wise as Sir Justin Wallingford looked.

His fund of information was prodigious, while his reasoning powers were so remarkable that he had never been known to commit the slightest action without furnishing a full and adequate explanation of his conduct.

Thus the discrimination shown by the Countess in choosing him to restore a lady's peace of mind will at once be apparent.
"The results of my inquiries," he pronounced, "have been on the whole of a negative nature.

If this mission on which the Baron von Blitzenberg professes to be employed is in fact of an unusually delicate nature, it is just conceivable that the answer I received from Prince Gommell-Kinchen, when I sounded him at the Khalifa's luncheon, may have been intended merely to throw dust in my eyes.