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Rh the only claim I press on your sympathy is that I became involved while trying to protect you."

"To protect me? Do you think I need a guardian, then?"

"I don't know what I thought at the beginning, but I am quite sure now that I need a guardian myself, and am urging you to act in that capacity for the next month. It isn't your money I want: I'm financing the scheme, and shan't ask you to risk a penny; but I'd like to have the benefit of your advice now and then, as the plan unfolds, and if I get myself into a tight place, which is quite likely, I'd feel safer if I knew you were arranging a method of helping me out."

Lord Stranleigh threw back his head and laughed heartily.

"Peter, day by day you present new and unexpected phases of genius. I have hitherto looked upon you as the embodiment of grim determination, showing a never-say-die tenacity in a fight. I expect from you a certain rugged honesty of remark, but never before have I regarded you as a diplomatist. Here am I pestered to death by all sorts and conditions of men, who wish me to invest money in this, that, or t'other. I have come to feel that I am a sort of modern Midas, from whom everyone wishes to chip a piece of gold, and then you drop in, and intimate that it is my mental qualifications and not my metal qualifications you wish to draw on. It is my mind, and not my cash