“I mean to say, if I have a lot of dooks and earls and viscounts and suchlike down to the country place I’ve gotten, you’ll be able to sort them out all right and put them where they should be round the dining table?”

“Oh! quite easily,” I replied, smiling.

We exchanged a few more preliminaries, and then I found myself engaged. What Mr. Ryland wanted was a secretary conversant with English society, as he already had an American secretary and a stenographer with him.

Two days later I went down to Hatton Chase, the seat of the Duke of Loamshire, which the American millionaire had rented for a period of six months.