A Man of Mark by Antonio Hope

It is a sad necessity that compels us to pry into the weaknesses of our fellow-creatures, and seek to turn them to our own profit. I am not philosopher enough to say whether this course of conduct derives any justification from its universality, but in the region of practice, I have never hesitated to place myself on a moral level with those with whom I had to deal. I may occasionally even have left the other party to make this needful adjustment, and I have never known him fail to do so. I felt, therefore, very little scruple in making use of the one weak spot discoverable in the defenses of our redoubtable opponent, his Excellency the President of Aureataland. No doubt the reader's eye has before now detected the joint in that great man's armor at which we directed our missile. As a lover, I grudged the employment of the signorina in this service; as a politician, I was proud of the device; as a human being, I recognized, what we are very ready to recognize, that it did not become me to refuse to work with such instruments as appeared to be put into my hands.

But whatever may be the verdict of moralists on our device, events proved its wisdom. The President had no cause to suspect a trap; therefore, like a sensible man, he chose to spend the evening with the signorina rather than with his gallant officers. With equally good taste, he elected to spend it _tete-a-tete_ with her, when she gave him the opportunity. In our subsequent conversations, the signorina was not communicative as to how the early hours of the evening passed. She preferred to begin her narrative from the point when their solitude was interrupted. As I rely on her account and that of the colonel for this part of my story, I am compelled to make my start from the same moment. It appears that at a few minutes past eleven o'clock, when the President was peacefully smoking a cigar and listening to the conversation of his fair guest (whom he had galvanized into an affected liveliness by alarming remarks on her apparent preoccupation), there fell upon his ear the sound of a loud knocking at the door. Dinner had been served in a small room at the back of the house, and the President could not command a view of the knocker without going out on to the veranda, which ran all round the house, and walking round to the front. When the knock was heard, the signorina started up.