"It isn't that," he assured her. "The machinery I have knocked into shape
is crude in its way, but the lives and liberty of those underneath depend
upon its workings."
"It sounds mysterious," she confessed.
"If you say that it is to be an alliance, Josephine," he decided, "it
shall be. I need your help enormously, but you must make up your mind,
before you say the last word, to run a certain measure of risk."
"What risk is there for me to run?" she asked, with a smile of
confidence. "What measure of unhappiness could be crowded into my life
which is not already there? I insist upon it--John--that you accept me as
an ally without any more hesitation."
He bent and kissed her hands.
"This, then, is final," he said. "Within the next twenty-four hours you
will be ready if necessary?"
"I am ready now--any time--always," she promised him.
CHAPTER XI
"My dears," Lady Amesbury said, as she stood surrounded by her guests on
the hearth rug of her drawing-room, "you know what my Sunday night dinner
parties are--all sorts and plenty of them, and never a dull man or a
plain woman if I can help it. To-night I've got a new man. He's not much
to look at, but they tell me he's a multimillionaire and making all the
poor people of the country miserable. He's doing something about making
bread dearer.
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