Chapter I

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      'London my home is; though by hard fate sent

       Into a long and irksome banishment;

       Yet since call'd back, henceforward let me be,

       O native country, repossess'd by thee!'

      Herrick.

      I

      Sir George Downing was back in London after an absence of twenty years from England. The circumstances which had led to his leaving his native country had been such that he could not refer to them, even in his own mind, and even after so long an interval, without an inward wincing more poignant than that which could have been brought about by the touching of any material wound.

      Born to the good fortune which usually attends the young Englishman of old lineage, a fair competence and a traditional career—in his case the pleasant one of diplomacy—Downing had himself brought all his chances to utter shipwreck. Even now, looking back with the dispassionate judgment automatically produced by the long lapse of time, and greater—ah, how much greater!—knowledge of the world, he decided that fate had used him hardly.

      What had really occurred was known to very few people, and these few had kept their own and his counsel to an unusual degree. The world, or rather that kindly and indulgent section of the world where young Downing had been regarded with liking, and even the affection, so easily bestowed on a good-looking and good-natured youngster, said to stand well with his chiefs, took a lenient view of a case of which it knew little. The fact that a lady was closely involved—further, that she was one of those fair strangers who in those days played a far greater part in diplomacy than would now be possible—lent the required touch of romance to the story. 'A Delilah brought to judgment' had been the comment of one grim old woman, mindful that she had been compelled to meet, if not to receive, the stormy petrel whose departure from London had been too hurried to admit of the leaving of P.P.C. cards on the large circle which had entertained, and, in a less material sense, been entertained by, her. As to her victim—only the very unkind ventured to use the word 'tool'—his obliteration had been almost as sudden, almost as complete.

      Other men, more blamed, if not more stricken, than he had been, had elected to spend their lives amid the ruins of their broken careers. More than one of his contemporaries had triumphantly lived down the memory of a more shameful record. Perhaps owing to his youth, he had followed his instinct—the natural instinct of a wounded creature which crawls away out of sight of its fellows—and now he had come back, having achieved, not only rehabilitation, but something more—the gratitude, the substantially expressed gratitude, of the most important section of his countrymen, those to whom are confided the destinies of an ever-increasing Empire.

      Even in these prosaic days an Englishman living in forced or voluntary exile sometimes achieves greater things for his country than can be so much as contemplated by the men who, though backed by the power and prestige of the Foreign Office, are also tied by its official limitations. His efforts thus being unofficial, the failure of them can be so regarded, and diplomacy can shrug its shoulders. But if they should be successful, as Downing's had been, diplomacy, while pocketing the proceeds, is not so mean as to grudge a due reward.

      Happy are those to whom substantial recognition comes ere it is too late. 'Persian' Downing, as he had, pour cause, come to be called, could now count himself among these fortunate few. Fate had offered him a great opportunity, which he had had the power and the intelligence to seize.

      Those at home who still remembered him kindly had been eager to point out that, far from adopting American nationality, as had once been rumoured, he had known how to prove himself an Englishman of the old powerful stock, jealous of his country's honour and capable of making it respected. What was more to the purpose, from a practical point of view, was the fact that he had known how to win the confidence of a potentate little apt to be on confidential terms with the half-feared, half-despised Western.

      That Downing had succeeded in maintaining his supremacy at a semi-barbaric Court, where he had first appeared in the not altogether dignified rôle of representative of an Anglo-American financial house, was chiefly due to a side of his nature, unsuspected by those who most benefited by it, which responded to the strange practical idealism of the Oriental. The terrible ordeal through which he had passed had long loosened his hold on life, bestowing upon him that calm fatalism and indifference to merely physical consequence which is ordinarily the most valuable asset of Orientals in their dealings with Western minds.

      When he had accepted, or