"Dartrey's had to go north for a few days," Miller confided officiously. "I ought to have gone too, but some one had to stay and look after things in the House. Rather a nuisance his being called away just now."
Tallente preserved a noncommittal silence. Miller rolled a cigarette hastily, took up his unwrapped umbrella and an ill-brushed bowler hat.
"Well, I must be going," he concluded. "If there is anything I can do for you during the chief's absence, look me up, Mr. Tallente. It's all the same, you know--Dartrey or me--Demos House in Parliament Street, or the House. You haven't forgotten your way there yet, I expect?"
With which parting shaft Mr. James Miller departed, and the secretary, Opening the door of Nora's sitting room, ushered Tallente in.
"Mr. Tallente," she announced, with a subdued smile, "fresh from a most engaging but rather one-sided conversation with Mr. Miller."
Nora was evidently neither attired nor equipped this afternoon for a tea party at Claridge's. She wore a dark blue princess frock, buttoned right up to the throat. Her hair was brushed straight back from her head, revealing a little more completely her finely shaped forehead. She was seated before a round table covered with papers, and Tallente fancied, even as he crossed the threshold, that there was an electric atmosphere in the little apartment, an impression which the smouldering fire in her eyes, as she glanced up, confirmed. The change in her expression, however, as she recognised her visitor, was instantaneous. A delightful smile of welcome chased away the sombreness of her face.
"My dear man," she exclaimed, "come and sit down and help me to forget that annoying person who has just gone out!"
"Miller is not one of your favorites, then?"
"Isn't he the most impossible person who ever breathed." she replied. "He was a conscientious objector during the war, a sex fanatic since--Mr. Dartrey had to use all his influence to keep him out of prison for writing those scurrulous articles in the Comet--and I think he is one of the smallest-minded, most untrustworthy persons I ever met. For some reason or other, Stephen Dartrey believes in him. He has a wonderful talent for organization and a good deal of influence with the trades unions.--By the by, it's all right about the muffins."