THE PRINCE OF
THE CAPTIVITY

There were only a few passengers by the South Wales Express, and to one young man in a first-class carriage the fact was very welcome. He had bought a paper almost unconsciously from the boy who came to the window, but it did him good service as a shield, from behind which he could cast suspicious and hostile glances, after the manner of the travelling Briton, at any one who seemed inclined to disturb his solitude, as long as the train was in the station. But when once the dreary and dirty buff brick surroundings of the terminus had been left behind, the paper fell to the floor, and Lord Usk gazed out of the window with an expression which seemed too ecstatic to be evoked even by the busy harvest-fields and the nursery-gardens full of asters and late roses on which his bodily eyes were resting. And indeed the scene before him might still have been a brick-and-mortar desert for all that he saw of it. His mental gaze was fixed upon the face of Miss Félicia J. Steinherz, the sight of which had changed the whole course of his life.

Could it really be the case, he was wondering, that a month ago he had never seen Félicia Steinherz? Yes, it was perfectly true, and the curious thing was that though he now saw clearly that life must have been a howling wilderness in those days, it had not seemed so at the time. He had been fairly satisfied with himself and his prospects, and quite unconscious that the world was in reality empty and out of joint. It was with a scornful pity that he looked back from his vantage-point of to-day upon the Usk of a month ago. She was breathing the same air with him then, and yet he had not so much as guessed at her existence, nor even been conscious of a blank without her! Ah, but he had; for was she not the fulfilment of all his dreams, the realisation of the ideal of womanhood which had haunted him from his boyish days? Here and there, in one woman or another, he had caught, as it seemed, glimpses of this ideal, but closer acquaintance dispelled the illusion. The woman of his dreams still eluded him tantalisingly—until he met Félicia. He did not ask himself whether she corresponded in all respects with his mental picture; it was enough that she was herself.

He could recall at this moment the rapture which had thrilled him when she first flashed upon his sight. It was the most ordinary and prosaic of introductions. He had met Hicks, the American newspaper-man, unexpectedly in Fleet Street, and had accepted without much enthusiasm his invitation to come and call with him upon J. Bertram Steinherz, the great Rhode Island shipbuilder, and his daughter, familiarly known in the States as the Plate Princess. Usk was not keen on meeting Americans, especially American heiresses who were presumably visiting England in search of titled bridegrooms, but Hicks was a family friend, and he accompanied him meekly to the Hotel Bloomsbury, with a passing wonder at the millionaire’s choosing such a locality. There was some excuse for the introduction, naturally; what was it? Oh, of course; Mr Steinherz was interested in a contract for the navigation of the Euphrates, and Usk had lately voyaged down that river, and could give him some tips. Blessed Euphrates! had it not floated him into paradise? He remembered Mr Hicks’s caustic strictures on the decoration of the hotel as compared with that of similar buildings in America, and his own shrug of amusement as he wondered what degree of obtrusive magnificence would be required to satisfy the æsthetic sense of the representative of the ‘Empire City Crier.’ He had entered the over-decorated room without receiving the slightest warning that it contained the one woman in the world, and his recollections came to a sudden stop at the point when the great discovery burst upon him. Mr Steinherz was there, of course, gentlemanly and well set-up, with a pointed grey beard and drooping moustache, which gave him the look of a retired naval officer; and there was a Miss Logan, who was introduced by Mr Steinherz as “my adopted daughter,” a thin, eager-looking girl, smartly dressed, and noticeable for a high, penetrating voice. Lastly, there was Miss Steinherz. She sat in her great carved oak chair like a princess receiving her court,—if ever a princess had such tiny hands and feet and such wonderful eyes,—and the draperies which floated round her were like nothing in heaven or earth but clouds. In cold blood Usk would probably have surmised that Miss Steinherz was wearing a tea-gown, although her dress had little in common with the loose and comfortable garment which his sister Philippa had been wont to don after a hard day’s hunting. There was lace about it that a queen might have worn—indeed Usk gathered later that the precious fabric, only half revealed, had been forced by the pinch of poverty from the hoarded stores of a queen in exile—there was the gleam of tiny diamond buckles, but the effect of the whole was that of clouds, clouds which were neither pink nor lavender nor grey nor blue, but which in some mysterious manner were all these at once. A woman would have hinted at the dexterous mingling and superimposition of chiffon of various tints, but to Usk all was mystic, wonderful. He was not even aware that his eyes and thoughts were alike fixed upon Miss Steinherz until he found himself assuring her father that at certain points in the voyage down the Euphrates it was usual to drag the steamer a mile or two overland.

After all, no harm was done—or at least Mr Steinherz did not appear to be astonished by this remarkable piece of information. Miss Steinherz it was who pounced upon the slip like a cat upon a mouse, and made merry at Usk’s expense for the rest of the visit. He could not have imagined an English girl’s engrossing the conversation as she did, and few Englishmen would have followed her lead as meekly as did her father and Mr Hicks; but how delightful it was to hear her talk, even when he himself was her butt! Now she was leaning back languidly in her chair, playing with a peacock-feather fan, while the words flowed forth slowly in a delicious lingering drawl; anon she was sitting erect, with every faculty on the alert, and rattling forth in quick succession the raciest, the most daring remarks. Not for one moment was Usk allowed to forget the foolish thing he had said, and yet while he was half-wounded, he was also half-pleased, and wholly fascinated. Miss Steinherz might say what she liked, if only she would say it in such an original and delightful way, and exhibit a new and more exquisite expression of face or pose of head with each sentence.

That night Usk paced his rooms until dawn. New impressions and sensations had so thronged upon him in the hour spent at the Hotel Bloomsbury that to be still was impossible, far more so to sleep. Now that he was removed from the witchery of her presence, it was borne in upon him what a pitiful figure he must have cut in her eyes. What could he do to convince her that he was not such a fool as he had appeared? To remain under such a stigma, to feel that he had deserved, not merely incurred, her contempt, was unbearable. An inspiration came to him, and day found him rummaging among the relics of his Eastern journey. Maps, photographs, scraps of his journals, geological specimens—everything that bore even remotely on the subject in which Mr Steinherz was interested—all these were looked out with the object of turning them to account. Usk was gazing at a most promising heap, when another inspiration came to him. He had made himself look a fool, there was no getting over the fact, and had deserved the raillery Miss Steinherz had poured upon him, but he would turn this defeat into a victory. These relics of travel, judiciously produced one by one, should procure him admission to the Hotel Bloomsbury not for one brief visit, but on many successive days. Perhaps he might succeed in rehabilitating himself in Miss Steinherz’s eyes by his eagerness to help her father, perhaps not; at any rate he would see her.

There was no shooting for Usk that August, and the man whose party he was to have joined on the moors found himself thrown over. September came, but the Marquis of Caerleon tramped the Llandiarmid stubble-fields alone, for Usk was still, as his father remarked ruefully, glued to London. Miss Steinherz was more beautiful and adorable and generally goddess-like than ever. Her turns of speech were nothing less than exquisite; even the way that she said “Pap-pa” and “Eu-rope” had a subtle charm of its own, and the little affectation of the accent on the first syllable raised her somewhat colourless Christian name into something unutterably sweet and strange. Her tongue was as ready as ever, but Usk had begun to fancy that she was not quite so inexorable in making fun of him as she had been. She had actually allowed him once or twice to finish a sentence without instantly turning it into ridicule, and on this slight foundation Usk was joyfully ready to erect a hopeful superstructure. He knew her outward appearance so well—the perfect figure, the small head poised on the slender neck, the delicate nose, the little mouth, the masses of dark hair which curled in rings on the white forehead and were piled above it in the most marvellous waves and twists; could it be possible that he was beginning to know Félicia herself—the mind, heart, soul, which must naturally be equally faultless? Those wonderful eyes, so large and dark and clear,—not the eyes of a girl, looking out wistfully on life half in hope and half in fear, but of a woman who feels that happiness is her right and intends to have it,—were they beginning to soften for him—for him? Oh, the bliss of the thought, that those frank eyes might one day fall before his, that Félicia might own that she loved him!

There was the sound of a footstep in the corridor of the railway carriage, and Usk snatched at his paper hurriedly, and began to study it with all his might, holding it up so as to hide his face. When he thought the intruder had passed on, he ventured to lower his screen, only to meet the mocking, not unkindly gaze of a tall lank man who was leaning against the inner doorway, evidently waiting for him to look up.

“I would bet my bottom dollar that I could state right now what you are thinking of,” said the newcomer slowly.

“Oh, it’s you, Hicks! Didn’t know you were a thought-reader.”

“I don’t begin to be one, sir. You gave yourself away, you see.” Mr Hicks’s gaze rested on the paper, and Usk flushed quickly as he perceived that it was upside-down. But there was no use in being dignified with Hicks, and he yielded the position with a laugh.

“I suppose you’re on your way home by the new route?” he said lightly, seeking safety in flight from the original subject. “I’m just running down to Llandiarmid for a day or two to see my people.”

“Is that so?” drawled Mr Hicks. “A rare and beautiful thing is family affection, any way! But I guess London licks the country this fall, doesn’t it?”

“It has been a good deal pleasanter this year than usual,” agreed Usk.

“I admire to see a young man open and candid, sir. Have you got any more acquainted with the Steinherzes yet?”

“You are nothing whatever but a good Inquisitor spoilt! I have seen a certain amount of them.”

“And so far as one of the party is concerned, it’s pretty generally concluded that to see her is to—you know how it goes along? But maybe you are an exception?”

“Really, a man can’t call his innermost feelings his own when you’re anywhere about, Hicks.” Mr Hicks nodded approvingly. “But after all, it was you that introduced me to her, and I’ll make you a present of the information, which you have probably guessed already, that I am going home to have a business talk with my father.”

Mr Hicks nodded again, and Usk, whose tongue seemed to have been loosed by his first admission, went on—

“There are times, you know, when a man feels he has to pay rather dear for the virtues of his family. It’s quite delightful, of course, to know that no landowner in South Wales does more for his tenants than my father, but the worst part of it is that it leaves so awfully little for us to live upon.”

“Don’t go around worrying over that,” said Mr Hicks soothingly. “The good American girl regards it as her mission these days to shore up the tottering British coronet with her dollars.”

“It’s her father I’m thinking of,” lamented Usk. “How can one go to a man and say, ‘Mr Steinherz, I love your daughter, and if you are prepared to hand her over rather more millions than I have hundreds a year, I daresay we shall get on very comfortably’?” Miss Steinherz’s prospective fortune was understood, be it remarked, to be of such satisfactory dimensions as to suffer no appreciable diminution even by reduction to English figures.

“If that’s all,” was the dry reply, “you can just go right away to J. Bertram Steinherz, and say those identical words. Why, sir, your request is real moderate. I guess an ordinary French or German count would have his father-in-law hand over that same pile of dollars, and rebuild his family castle, and take his crown out of pawn as well, before he would conclude to make a trade. Then he would invite the bride to embrace his religion, and when everything was fixed up according to his notions, he would intimate to the father-in-law that, much as he respected him as a dollar-grinding machine, he guessed he would be conscious of more real, whole-souled pleasure in the partnership if he could regard him as a fixture in the States for the future.”

“I can’t fancy Mr Steinherz standing that sort of thing. He’s not—not——”

“Don’t quite look the part of the ordinary heavy father from the States?” said Mr Hicks quickly, as Usk hesitated. “That is so, sir. He doesn’t incline to play it, either.” He stopped abruptly.

“That’s it. He is so awfully dignified and polite that I feel as if I should sink into the ground when I think of going to him with an offer that must strike him as such arrant cheek. Do you know, Hicks, that he and Miss Steinherz came to the Duchess of Old Sarum’s reception after all? I got them a card, but Mr Steinherz was so high and mighty about accepting that I felt horribly small.”

“J. B. Steinherz was always real high-toned in his notions. At home he lays himself out to snub his fellow-citizens, and the smart set are ready to kiss his boots because he is ‘so charmingly exclusive.’ Here in England he doesn’t hold with thrusting himself into intimacy with the British nobility, so he puts in his time at a down-town hotel, and scorns ducal invitations.”

“Well, I got him to Sarum House, at any rate, and every one was asking who he was. There was one very old lady there, Mrs Sadleir, a great friend of my people’s—knew my grandfather—who was quite smitten with him, and wanted me to tell her who was the elderly man with the grand air. When I said he was an American, she was really snappish, and said he reminded her of some one she had known long ago. I brought him up and introduced him, and they flirted solemnly for nearly an hour. Afterwards Mrs Sadleir said she couldn’t place him exactly, but she was pretty sure he must be a Southerner, for he had just the fine manners of the men who used to come over here before the war.”

“J. B. S. is a real white man,” said Mr Hicks emphatically. “And you don’t need to be afraid of sailing right in, sir, so far as he is concerned. You’ll scarcely tell me he hasn’t known why you were loafing around all the time at his hotel. No, you may bet your boots that it’s Miss Maimie that’s your rock ahead—honest Injun.”

“Miss Logan? But why in the world should she have anything to do with it?”

“Women with a real consuming ambition on behalf of another woman are not plenty anywhere,” said Mr Hicks slowly, “and maybe least of all in America, but that’s how it is with Miss Maimie. She would sell her very soul to see Félicia Steinherz make a great marriage. Why, a year or so back she all but engineered her into marrying Prince Timoleon Malasorte.”

“The Neustrian Pretender?”

“The same, sir. He was an attaché in the Scythian Embassy at Washington those days, but you bet he meant to be emperor, same’s he does now, and with Félicia’s dollars and her smartness back of him I calculate he’d have got there. But J. B. S. put his foot down, and the Embassy found itself bereaved of its brightest ornament. That’s why I say, Watch out for Miss Maimie. Félicia won’t marry any one below a duke if she can help it.”

“You mean that the son of a very poor marquis hasn’t much chance, then? But Mr Steinherz will feel that even more strongly than you do, don’t you see?”

“No, sir, he will not. Mushroom coronets he has no use for, but he knows there’s nothing shoddy about you. And don’t have your natural modesty blind you to the show side of your family record. It’s not every poor marquis that has taken his seat on a European throne, even for three months, or has seen his brother the wonder of four continents and the husband of a queen.”

“You are getting positively epic,” said Usk, his tone becoming unconsciously more cheerful.

“I guess my subject inspires me, sir. Any news of your uncle these days, by the way? Not worrying himself sick, I hope?”

“He seems well enough, but his brain-power doesn’t return.”

“Does he incline to plunge into politics again, or has he concluded to stick to his snug estate way back there?”

“He is as happy there as he would be anywhere, I think. Nothing has been said about his coming to Europe.”

“Now it’s a curious thing,” remarked Mr Hicks meditatively, “but a whole crowd of the Jews have their eyes fixed upon him yet. They see that while he was boss, things went ahead, but when he dropped out, the outfit went to smash right away. Well, they suspicion that he was intrigued off the stage by the millionaires, so they just incline to intrigue him back there. They are plotting to fix things so’s they can invite him along again. The Prince of the Captivity, they call him, after some old cuss that hung out his sign in those parts sometime, and they have passwords and ciphers, and every requisite of a properly equipped plot on the largest scale.”

“I’m afraid they’ll be disappointed. He won’t let them thrust him into a position that he could not fill with satisfaction to himself.”

“They’ll just have to invite you to operate the scheme instead of him.”

“Ah, I might have thought of it once,” said Usk, with a seriousness which tickled Mr Hicks extremely, “but of course things will be different now, if——” he laughed, not unhappily. “A year or two ago I was mad to get out into the world and do something big. I often wish I had gone into the army, even now.”

“Well, now, I thought you gave that up nobly because your mother was breaking her heart over it? But maybe you’ve been busy taking the shine off the sacrifice ever since—sort of ‘If I mayn’t do what I like, I won’t do anything’?”

“Every one isn’t a born social reformer, like my mother,” said Usk, somewhat coldly. Then his face cleared. “But very likely I shall go into Parliament now, and that will please her tremendously.”

“And you think it will please another person as well, maybe?”

“Yes, I’m sure it will. She made me feel awfully ashamed one day when she said how she envied people of our class in England, who could find any number of followers any day if only they cared to lead. She couldn’t make out how we could throw away our opportunities and not lead, she said.”

“Félicia Steinherz among the prophets!” said Mr Hicks drily. “And you have hoarded the remark to repeat it to Lady Caerleon, because you calculate that will please her tremendously too? Well, go ahead and get there! Ask me to the wedding. If you cable right away when you get things fixed, I’ll find it waiting for me when I arrive home.”

He rose to continue his exploration of the train, and Usk fished a scrap of paper out of his pocket, and devoted himself once more to the abstruse calculations with which it was covered. It was his earnest desire to be able to prove to Mr Steinherz that if he married Félicia, her fortune might be entirely reserved for her own use, but the facts were against him. Even if the family house in town, which had until lately been let on a long lease, were made over to him, it would be utterly beyond his father’s power to give him enough to keep it up, even with the most rigorous carefulness. The family at Llandiarmid were accustomed to save—to pinch, Usk called it—but he was conscious of sudden disgust for his own selfishness when he pictured the further economies that would be necessary if his allowance was to be increased. And for what? To allow him to live in luxury without wounding his pride by touching Félicia’s money! There would be no rigid economy in Félicia’s household, he knew that well enough. If she wished for a thing, she ordered it, regardless of the cost, although a curious strain of shrewdness sometimes showed itself in the ardour with which she would pursue a discount of a few pence on a bill of many pounds. He had vivid recollections of the boxes which had accompanied her and Miss Logan on their return from a flying visit to Paris about a fortnight ago, and the calm way in which they had mentioned what seemed to him the fabulous sums paid for a single gown or toque. Decidedly, a household which included Félicia would be an expensive outfit to run, as Mr Hicks had once put it.

Usk had learnt something of this by personal experience. From the day when he first made the delightful discovery that Transatlantic etiquette permitted him to give expression to his feelings by presenting offerings at the shrine of his goddess, he had taken full advantage of his privileges. Félicia accepted the offerings with perfect calmness, but Usk felt a thrill of pride, which to an outside observer might have had something pathetic in it, in the fact that he was obliged to cut down his personal expenses in order to provide them. It was very foolish, no doubt; the sensible course would have been to obtain his gifts on credit, but with a touch of quixotry he chose rather to deny himself that he might keep his love supplied with the marvellous candies and rare flowers which she regarded as necessaries of life. She possessed a cultured palate and the eye of a wealthy connoisseur, and Usk went so far as to give up smoking when he was alone, and had even cherished thoughts of travelling third class. But in that case he could not have enjoyed in peace the delight of thinking about Félicia, and his heroism failed him when it came to the point.

It was not unnatural that Miss Steinherz should also be thinking of him this evening, for the floor of her bedroom was strewn with the leaves and stalks and petals of the last roses he had sent her. They were the very newest roses, the blossoms of a curious coppery-pink tinge, and Usk had paid a fabulous price for them on his way to the station. Miss Logan remarked slightingly on them when the maid had put them in water, and Félicia threw one at her. She returned it, and the mimic battle was continued until not a single rose remained on its stalk. Flushed and laughing, the girls desisted, and presently Félicia sent away the maid and allowed her friend to brush her hair, while she herself performed certain mysterious operations on her finger-nails, with the aid of the contents of a dainty gold-mounted morocco case.

“Is it Monday or Tuesday that we dine Lord Usk?” she asked lightly, with a sudden upward glance.

“It’s Usk—Usk—all the time!” was the impatient answer.

“Not just all the time,” said Félicia sweetly, “but I guess it soon will be.”

“Félicia Steinherz, you make me tired!”

“Now don’t get mad, Maimie. If a duke had come along, I’d have married him, as I’ve stated times and times, but, you see, that duke hasn’t materialised, and Lord Usk is right here.”

“I’d have had you marry an emperor,” said Maimie Logan, through her teeth.

“And I’m real grateful to you, but the emperor didn’t rise to the occasion either, did he? I admired to see his affections just wilt when pappa said he wouldn’t give me a red cent if I married him. I was done with him then, but if he’d had the grace to stick to me, you bet pappa would have weakened at last. It was a pity, for I feel I have it in me to care more for an emperor than any other man, because he’d really have given me something to be grateful for.”

“Well, don’t accept Lord Usk in such a tearing hurry. There are dukes left yet, and princes too.”

“Why, certainly, but you haven’t looked all around this thing, Maimie. You had better make up your mind that pappa isn’t going to give me any more chances of meeting those dukes and princes than he can help.”

“I want to know! Why not?”

“Just listen to me, and ask yourself. Since I was ’most a baby, I’ve known that some way my folks were different from other girls’ fathers and mothers. I guess it was pappa’s high-toned manners, and mamma’s never having more than half a voice in her own house; and you know as well as I do, though we don’t have other people see it, what an icy terror pappa can be yet when he likes. Why, we wouldn’t be here if he could have helped it.” Maimie smiled grimly at this allusion to the circumstances attending their departure for England. Mr Steinherz, summoned suddenly to London on the business of his Euphrates Syndicate, had telegraphed to his daughter that he was leaving New York by the next day’s boat. Félicia, who had for years demanded a visit to Europe in vain, was touched in her tenderest point. Telegrams flashed backwards and forwards, and when Mr Steinherz went on board, the first person he saw was his daughter, holding a farewell reception of her fashionable friends, with Maimie and a maid and a marvellous pile of luggage in the background.

“Yes, we fixed things pretty smartly that time,” pursued Félicia; “but he has played it awfully low down on us since, Maimie. I think it’s real mean of him to bring us along to this hotel, where there are only dowdy English people, and not let us go to the Continent at all, except that two days in Paris. And to have us decline all of those invitations that Lord Usk would have got us!”

“But he hasn’t been ugly, Fay, as he might have been. And when you think of some girls’ folks——”

“Oh, I know. Why, there’s Sadie van Zyl, in the smartest set here and the very toniest society everywhere—what she must suffer when she has to produce either her husband or her father! I don’t wonder she has a nerve-attack most times, and goes off to some cure or other.”

“Well, now, you need never feel badly like that, you know.”

“That’s so, but then I never have the chance of exhibiting pappa. I should admire to have him go with us to all sorts of places, but he won’t. Now, Maimie, if those Van Rensselaer girls knew just this, what would they say? Why, that there was some reason why he didn’t care to show himself in Europe. That may be so, or it may not; I don’t choose to inquire, but I incline to think that he settled in the States because he had taken a hand in some political game, and it didn’t eventuate just the way he hoped it would. Whatever the mystery was, your mother was in it, but not your father.” Maimie nodded. “Then we’ll take that as understood, and you’ll see I have to hoe my own row. Now Lord Usk is real nice to pappa, and from all we hear I don’t see but pappa will think his folks just lovely. So I’m on.”

“Wait, just wait!” entreated Maimie. “Don’t go ahead so fast.”

“Now, Maimie, you’re going to give up all of this foolishness—see? I’m watching out for an investment in real estate, and here’s Lord Usk just hungering to be developed. I shall have him run for Parliament—it’s quite a toney thing to do here—and then I’ll push him up step by step.”

“He’ll turn ugly,” prophesied Maimie. “He just loves the country——”

“Maimie Logan, are you going to tell me I don’t know how to fix things any way I want them? He will stay in town when I choose, and take me abroad when I choose, and go way down into the country when I let him. Say, Maimie, don’t yank all of my hair right out!”

“You are forgetting his folks. I don’t see but you’ll have trouble with them.”

“They won’t trouble me any. The old lord and lady won’t be encouraged to come around much in town. I guess their influence wouldn’t be helpful.”

“Why, Fay Steinherz, I’m sure they’re real good, from what he says—church members and all that.”

“I’m not running him for church elder, Maimie. Lord Caerleon is just a Temperance crank, and the old lady never put on a Paris gown nor attended a smart function in her life. And they’re not smiled upon in the really good set because of those Eastern adventures they have on hand all the time. I have some use for the uncle Mr Hicks talks about, that married some queen or other, but that’s different. Of course I’ll visit at the Castle, and ask people there for shooting-parties and that. One must be in the country some time, I suppose. I wonder if there’s a dower-house, or whatever they call it in books? If there is, I guess the old folks might be brought to see the propriety of retiring to it, and leaving the Castle to us.”

“You seem to have got everything fixed up pretty nicely.”

“That is so. This outfit will be run on strict business lines, you’ll see. Pappa has me start under a disadvantage by his unfatherly conduct, but I wipe that out by marrying Usk. Then all depends on myself, and I can’t afford to have sentiment spoil my plans. I’ll see myself a duchess or vicereine of India yet.”

CHAPTER II.
BORN IN THE PURPLE.

Usk was late in keeping his dinner engagement with the Steinherzes. It was not his fault, as he explained eagerly when he arrived; he had left Llandiarmid at an unearthly hour in the morning, to make sure of catching the early train from Aberkerran, and had got up to town in excellent time. It was when he was driving from his rooms to the hotel that the delay occurred. The Archduke Ferdinand Joachim, cousin to the Emperor of Pannonia, who had just arrived on a visit to England, was being conducted in state to Buckingham Palace, and the British public had turned out in full force to welcome him. The royal carriages and liveries, and the fact that a popular Prince had gone to meet the traveller, made it evident that this was an occasion for cheering, and accordingly dense crowds lined the route, to the dire interruption of the traffic at all the cross-roads, in one of which Usk sat fuming in his hansom.

“Well, you must have had a pretty good view of the royalties, any way,” said Maimie Logan.

“Oh yes, but I had no particular yearning for that. I have seen the Prince so often, you know, and I didn’t care about the other chap. But I wished you and Miss Steinherz had been there. It’s a chance you don’t often get at this time of year.”

“What is the Archduke like, now?” asked Mr Steinherz suddenly. “You would be able to see him distinctly?”

“Quite.” Usk turned to his host with ready deference. “A fair-sized man, I should say—looks as though he had been born in uniform, as all those Germans do. Hair brushed straight back, rather à la scrubbing-brush, as far as I could see, big pince-nez, a sort of nondescript brown moustache, with the points turned up fiercely. I think that must have been dyed, though, for his hair was grey behind.”

“Yes,” said Mr Steinherz meditatively, “he is pretty well along—older than I am. He was in Venetia in the ’Sixties—made his name there. And it wasn’t a particularly sweet name, either. I guess a good few Italians have unfulfilled vows of vengeance out against him yet.”

“Say, pappa!” broke in Félicia; “how did you get to know that much about a no-account German prince?”

“Well, daughter, I don’t see but I must have heard it from the Italian clerk I had once,” was the leisurely reply, which silenced Félicia for the time, since she knew well enough that the clerk in question had been dismissed for falling in love with his employer’s daughter. Maimie, always watchful on her friend’s behalf, changed the subject, and it was not until the meal was over that her efforts to keep the peace failed. Usk had been anxious to escort the ladies this evening to a concert at which some bright particular star was announced to appear, but Mr Steinherz vetoed the proposal rather summarily, regardless of his daughter’s rebellious looks. Most unjustly Félicia made Usk suffer for her disappointment, sitting bored and silent all evening, and sweeping Maimie off to bed at a ridiculously early hour, on the plea of a headache. Maimie offered no objection to the imperious summons, but took occasion to drop her handkerchief just outside the sitting-room door. Returning to fetch it as soon as Félicia was safe in her own room, she heard Usk taking his leave.

“May I call upon you in the morning?” he asked of Mr Steinherz. “I should like—— There is—— I want to ask you something.”

“State it right now,” was the unexpected answer. “I am having a vacation this evening, thanks to Félicia’s nervous attack.”

Maimie shook with silent laughter, for she guessed that Usk found some difficulty in unfolding his request now that the opportunity was thus suddenly thrust upon him. He muttered something about “Very important,” to which Mr Steinherz responded by a cordial invitation to discuss the matter in his office, where they would be safe from interruption. The room was a small one, with one door from the corridor into which all the apartments of the Steinherzes’ suite opened, and another from the sitting-room, and in it Mr Steinherz spent most of his time, and received all his business visitors, in an atmosphere of smoke. Maimie reviewed the position swiftly, as she heard the door between the study and the sitting-room close with a decisive slam. Félicia was fortunately in the hands of her maid by this time, and the brushing of her hair alone might be relied upon to keep her occupied for an hour at least, but it was out of the question to listen at the door in the corridor, for the hotel servants were constantly passing. Moreover, if the discussion were to be conducted in lower tones, it would be very difficult to hear it through the door. The only hope was the balcony, upon which the windows of both rooms looked, and Maimie opened the sitting-room door very softly, leaving it slightly ajar so as to afford a way of escape, and crossing the room on tiptoe, put her head out cautiously. As she had expected, the warmth and beauty of the night had tempted the two men to sit at the open window of the office, and she could see the tip of one of Mr Steinherz’s shoes. The odour of his cigar reached her as she sat crouched inside her own window, leaning forward as far as she dared, and she heard him chaffing Usk upon the length of time it took an Englishman to strike a match. Apparently the match refused to strike at all, and Usk laid down his cigar in despair, for presently Mr Steinherz said “Well?” in a half-authoritative, half-humorous tone which rejoiced the listener exceedingly.

“Mr Steinherz,” returned Usk with a sudden burst of frankness, “I love your daughter. May I ask her to marry me?”

Maimie thought she could imagine the quizzical glance under which the unhappy suitor would be writhing, but she was electrified by the words which answered him.

“Stop right there!” said Mr Steinherz decisively. “We will take those words as unsaid, if you please. I was not expecting them until a later stage of the proceedings, and there are some circumstances with which I guess you ought to get acquainted before you utter them.”

Maimie held her breath. Her only idea had been to observe Mr Steinherz’s treatment of this new suitor, and especially to see whether he really favoured him, as it had struck her he did. But was she unintentionally, and all in a moment, on the point of dispelling the mystery upon which she and Félicia had touched in their confidential talk? She heard Mr Steinherz rise and unlock a table-drawer, then return, apparently with something in his hand.

“Do you seem to know any of those faces?” she heard him ask.

“I don’t think so,” said Usk. “Wait a minute, though. It’s an old photograph of the Emperor of Pannonia, isn’t it?—and his brothers, I suppose?”

“No; his cousins, the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim and—myself.”

From her own sensations, Maimie could imagine the bewilderment on Usk’s face as he gazed blankly at the speaker.

“You don’t see the likeness?” Mr Steinherz went on; “but the folks used often mistake us three for one another. Look right in my face; I just brush my hair back some; I turn up my moustache and hide my beard, showing the Hohenstaufen mouth. Now do you perceive no likeness to the Archduke as you saw him three hours back?”

“I see! I see!” cried Usk. “But,” he added, rising and walking round his host, “from behind you need no alteration at all. If you were in uniform I should take you for him.”

“Is that so?” said Mr Steinherz. “Well, you will excuse me if I resume my usual appearance? I apprehend that if it got around there was a double of the Archduke staying at the Hotel Bloomsbury, it might cause some inconvenience. And now, do you incline to hear the circumstances, or not?”

“There’s nothing I should like better. I don’t know whether I’m standing on my head or my heels.”

Maimie could picture Mr Steinherz’s grim smile. “Did you ever hear of Prince Joseph of Arragon?” he asked.

“I seem to know the name,” said Usk meditatively. “Yes, wasn’t it the man who ran off with an—a lady and was lost at sea, twenty or thirty years ago?”

“Who was supposed to have been lost at sea,” corrected Mr Steinherz impressively. “As a matter of fact, he is sitting opposite you now.”

“Oh—er—I beg your pardon,” stammered Usk.

“Your remark was natural. There is now only one other person besides yourself who knows the truth. In the Schlosskirche at Vindobona I understand there is a cenotaph to the memory of José Maria Beltran, Prince of Arragon, drowned off the Australian coast in the wreck of his yacht, the Claudine, but Joseph Bertram Steinherz could give the lie to that statement if he chose.”

“You escaped from the wreck, I suppose, and took advantage of the general belief to disappear—sir?” hazarded Usk.

“Not just exactly; but I will tell you all of the story. But, first, remember that you are on your honour not to breathe a word of what I tell you to any living creature, especially to my daughter; and again, don’t make a prince of me. I have turned my back on all of that for ever.”

Usk bowed uneasily, as Maimie could just distinguish from where she crouched. She was completely shielded from the sight of Mr Steinherz, although she had ventured to creep out on the balcony, and was now close to them, her black gown indistinguishable in the darkness. Even if Usk should chance to turn his head, she believed that she was quite safe, and could retreat into her own window in a moment.

“You will know,” said Mr Steinherz, “that my father, King Paul X. of Cantabria, was driven from his throne in ’48. When I was born he was already an exile at the Court of Vindobona. His mother was a Pannonian archduchess, and the two houses had always been united by the closest bonds. He received at the hands of his cousin the Emperor the honours due to a reigning monarch, and on his death it was only at Vindobona and the Vatican that my brother Ramon was recognised as titular King of Cantabria. Ramon is a man of science and a philosopher, however, and in daily life he contents himself with the older and undisputed title of Prince of Arragon. My mother was a princess of Weldart—an aunt of the lady who has already linked your family and mine by marrying your uncle Count Mortimer.” Maimie saw Usk move uncomfortably, and guessed that he was trying, in a dazed kind of way, to discover whether the connection thus disclosed between himself and Félicia need be any bar to their marriage. The same idea had come to herself with a thrill of hope, but she saw its absurdity in a moment. Mr Steinherz had risen from his chair and was walking about.

“I cannot speak calmly when I think of my mother,” he went on. “For political reasons, which means, in plain English, her brother’s need of money, she was married to my father as a child of seventeen, after being summarily converted for the purpose. Needless to say, her consent was not asked to either process. She made him an excellent wife, and if he had taken her advice, it would, I believe, have averted the revolution which cost him his throne; but on account of her German and Protestant upbringing she was always looked upon with distrust, and my father himself shared it. So strongly did she disapprove of the perpetual intrigues by which he sought to regain his kingdom after losing it, that soon after my birth an amicable separation was arranged, without giving rise to any scandal. My mother retired with me to an estate on the Adriatic, where my father and brothers visited us occasionally, and I was sometimes conducted, much against my will, to Vindobona, which my mother, on the plea of ill-health, always avoided, and from which I always returned to her with increasing joy. As I grew older her one fear was that I might be taken from her, and to escape this she proposed that I should be entered as a student at the naval academy of the great dockyard and arsenal which lay not far from us. Though all my training hitherto had been military, it was the sea to which my own heart turned, and I don’t know whether my mother or I was the more rejoiced when I was allowed to follow my bent. For several happy years I worked hard at the mysteries of shipbuilding—much harder than suited my superiors and companions, who would have preferred to see me placed in some post of nominal authority, where I should not trouble them. Several times it was suggested that I should be appointed to a sea-going ship, and sent on a long cruise, but my mother’s piteous entreaties—she humbled herself to my father and the Emperor in her agony at the thought of losing me—and my own absorption in my work, which seemed likely to be productive of great advantage to the navy in future, gained me a respite. One of the complaints against me was that I withdrew myself from the society of companions of my own age. It did not occur to my accusers that in my leisure hours I had the constant society of a woman who had read widely, thought deeply, and suffered much, and that this had quite spoiled me for the company of the class of men I met every day. I always look back to my twenty-third year as the period of my greatest happiness—perhaps in contrast with the dark time which followed. A legacy had come to me from a godfather when I was twenty-one, and I spent the greater part of it in building a large steam-yacht from my own designs. Some of my relations looked askance at such waste of money, but the Emperor, finding that the yacht was intended to test various inventions of my own in naval matters, was pleased with my interest in my profession, and encouraged me. I called the yacht the Claudine, after my mother, and spared no pains to make her the smartest and most seaworthy craft of her size afloat. When she was finished we tested her in all weathers. I had a crew enrolled from among the fishermen with whom I had made friends as a boy, and my mother was always my passenger. Only one of her ladies cared for the sea, and she made her her constant companion on these trips. Aline von Hartenweg was young, beautiful, enthusiastic, devoted to my mother, devoted to the sea—is it any wonder that an attachment sprang up between us? We were so happy, so thoroughly contented with our life, that we did not ourselves perceive the chief cause of our happiness. Others saw it before we did, notably the chaplain at the Castle, whom my mother always suspected of being placed as a spy upon her. Presently a furious letter from my father announced that he was coming to put an end to this foolishness, and to send me off on a three years’ cruise. My mother had long been suffering from a mortal disease, but I shall never believe that she might not have lived for years, if she had been left in peace. As it was, the shock, and the realisation of the truth, were too much for her, and when the King arrived he found her on her deathbed. She had poured out her soul to me on the subject of Aline, assuring me that the marriage would never be allowed, that our attachment could only cause misery and contention, and adjuring me to go abroad as my father wished, unless I felt that my life’s happiness was bound up in Aline. I assured her that it was, and her last words to my father, who could not in decency refuse to hear them, were a petition that we might be allowed to marry. Then she died.”

Mr Steinherz came to a standstill at the window, and stood looking with unseeing eyes at the starry sky overhead, the rustling black plane-trees in the square far below, surrounded by their ring of lamps, the low dark houses beyond. Maimie hid her face lest its whiteness should betray her.

“My father was less angry than his letter had prepared me to expect,” Mr Steinherz went on. “He could not but disapprove most strongly of my choice, he said, and would promise nothing as to the future, but if I would consent to make a voyage round the world at once, giving my word not to hold any communication with the Countess Aline while I was away, he would see what could be done on my return. I murmured at the harshness of the stipulation, reminding him that my brother Florian had been permitted to marry Princess Erzsebet Mohacsy, who was not of royal blood; to which he replied, with the cynical brutality he sometimes affected, that she brought a princedom as the price of the alliance, whereas my poor Aline’s father could barely give her a dress-allowance. I yielded. My mother’s entreaties to me not to come to an open breach with my father were still in my ears, and I could not see anything better to do. I was appointed to one of the largest Pannonian men-of-war, and I did not dislike the cruise. When I had been away two years, the news of my brother Florian’s death recalled me hastily to Vindobona, and I found Aline—married. What pressure they had brought to bear on her, what lies they had told her about me, I do not know and did not ask; but she was married to a rough fellow called Baron Radniky—a noble, it is true, but the very type of a churlish, bigoted reactionary. I had a terrible scene with my father when I learned the truth, and I swore I would remain in Pannonia no longer. I would cast aside my rank, as I had intended to do if I married Aline, and go out into the world a free man. He laughed in my face when I said this, and as soon as I was outside the room I found myself under arrest. For weeks I was a State prisoner inside the palace,—I, who was accustomed to freedom and an active life,—and at the end of that time my relations thought they could deal with me. The Emperor patched up a reconciliation with my father, and I was allowed my personal liberty, but forbidden to leave Vindobona. All the people round me were spies—my cousins the Archdukes, the servants, the gay young men who were set on to divert my mind. I saw there was no hope of escape at present, and I allowed myself to seem resigned. Aline lived far away in the country. She had passed out of my life, and for that I was thankful. But the vicious idleness of my surroundings I could not endure, and at last I obtained leave to set up a laboratory in my father’s gardens, at a safe distance from the palace, in order to continue my scientific experiments. Here again the Emperor stood my friend, and even allowed me to send for my foster-brother, Martin Richter, and install him as my assistant. It was supposed that he did all the menial work of the laboratory; but my relations would indeed have been astonished if they had seen prince and peasant labouring together, for he knew as much of the theoretical part of the work as I did, and in the practical part we relieved one another.”

“And this was all a blind?” Usk ventured to ask, as a smile, called up by his recollections, crept over Mr Steinherz’s face.

“It was all done with a purpose, and when by-and-by I was allowed to run down to the Adriatic for more important experiments on board the Claudine, though the limit of my stay was strictly fixed, I knew my time was at hand. But before it arrived something happened which changed the whole character of my flight. In her lifetime my mother had befriended a young girl, the last descendant of a noble, but poverty-stricken, family of Weldart. As a child, Konstantia von Lilienkranz had shown extraordinary talent in several directions, and her own intense desire was to go upon the stage. My mother dissuaded her from this, but sent her, at her own expense, to a famous conservatorium, where her musical gifts might be cultivated, intending to find her a post as Court pianist when she grew up. Her death left the poor girl friendless, for she knew too well the light in which her patroness had been regarded by the members of the Imperial family to seek help from them. The variety of her talents had created quite a sensation at the conservatorium, and admiring professors and fellow-students had done so much to spread her fame that she was actually offered an engagement to play ingénue parts at a leading Vindobona theatre, while a great maestro volunteered to train her to sing in grand opera. Remembering the wishes of her patroness, she refused both offers, and had the courage to strike out for herself in a new line—as a society entertainer, you would call it, I suppose. She gave a series of concerts at which she herself, either as singer, reciter, or instrumentalist, supplied all the items, and the idea was so new and daring that she was the sensation of the moment in the capital. This was soon after I had been allowed a little more freedom. I was anxious to show an interest in my mother’s protégée, and went to hear her play several times. I sent her bouquets, and asked to be presented to her, the girl receiving the attentions, as they were offered, purely as marks of kindness from the son of her patroness. But the censorious world thought otherwise, as I ought to have remembered would be only too likely in the case of a woman in her position. My cousins met me with meaning looks, and congratulated me on my conquest. ‘The stony-hearted Stanzerl,’ as the gilded youth of Vindobona called her, had stepped down from her pedestal, so they hinted. The cessation of my attentions might have ended the scandal as regarded myself, but the whispers had reached her. One day the old woman, half-attendant, half-duenna, who lived with her, came to me privately to beg me not to show any further interest in her charge, who was in the deepest distress owing to the reports spread concerning her. I was horrified and disgusted. That I should have brought this anguish upon my mother’s favourite! Impulsively I wrote off to my brother Florian’s widow, whom I knew to have the kindest heart in the world, telling her what I had reason to belief was the case, that Fräulein von Lilienkranz found the strain and publicity of her life very trying, and would be most thankful to exchange it for a more sheltered one. Would not my sister-in-law find room for her in her household, even if only as instructor in music to her year-old daughter? I waited impatiently for the answer. Princess Florian wrote in evident distress of mind. She would have been delighted to befriend any one in whom my mother had been interested, but in this case she had been warned—deeply underlined—that it would be wiser not to take any step, and she could not disregard the warning. I was perplexed and disappointed, but I could not give up my plan so easily. I ran down to my sister-in-law’s estates on a visit—having duly obtained leave—and asked her point-blank why she would not help Fräulein von Lilienkranz. With the utmost difficulty I extracted from her that in view of the rumours connecting the young lady’s name with mine, she could not admit her into her household. In vain I pointed out to her that if I had unwittingly compromised the girl, my relations might at least do what they could to clear her name, but she was afraid of offending my father, and would do nothing. Then I saw that there was method in what had been done. I was to be entangled in an ordinary vulgar scandal, to keep me from rushing into an unequal marriage. There and then I determined to turn the tables upon my friends, and I waylaid the old duenna the next day, and with all possible frankness took her into my confidence. I told her it was my desire to marry Fräulein von Lilienkranz, and intrusted her with a letter asking for an interview. The adventure pleased me; there was something chivalrous in the idea that made me half in love with the girl already, and when I saw her, her resistance to the notion determined me to persist in it. She was horrified at the thought of injuring the son of her patroness, but she was lonely and troubled, and had learnt that a public life is not the easiest one in the world for a good woman. I told her that I was resolved upon escaping from Pannonia, and that if she would give up her career for my sake, we would make a home together in the New World. I had not foreseen her adoring gratitude, and it made me ashamed, but she consented, and I laid my plans—quickly, you may guess, for whether I attended her concerts or stayed away from them, tongues wagged afresh, and Konstantia suffered a new martyrdom. I needn’t waste time in telling you of the different failures and disappointments I had to face; let us go on to the decisive moment. It was a cold spring evening. I had ordered a special train to be in readiness to take me southwards at eleven o’clock, and I had also invited a number of friends to supper at ten, on the understanding that we were to make a night of it. You observe that the arrangements sound slightly inconsistent?”

“I was just thinking so,” said Usk.

“Precisely; but then my friends knew nothing about the train, you see. I had hinted to one of them when I invited him that after supper ‘das Stanzerl’ would recite, and they had all got to know of it. The meeting-place was my laboratory, suitably decorated, of course, for the occasion, and my friends enjoyed themselves thoroughly. I was one of themselves now, they all assured me. Even my old enemy the chaplain, who I had insisted should be present, smiled benignantly upon me. Konstantia, her maid, and myself were alone ill at ease, all knowing what was at hand. When the servants had left, Konstantia gave the promised recitation. It was a scene from some classical drama, but I can’t tell you what it was, for I never heard a word of it. The girl’s nerve was magnificent. She did not falter once, and at the close I advanced towards her with the usual compliments, as if to lead her to a seat. She placed her hand in mine, we turned and faced the company—the priest was exactly opposite us. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘in your presence and that of these witnesses I take this woman to be my wife.’ All sprang up. I silenced them with a gesture, and Konstantia repeated clearly and without hurry, ‘Before God and these witnesses, I take this man to be my husband.’ We exchanged rings before they could stop us, then, ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘the Princess wishes to retire.’ As I made no attempt to reach the door, they did not prevent Konstantia and the maid from leaving the room. Furious at having been tricked into acting as witnesses of a marriage ceremony, my cousins and the rest stormed at me. They vowed they would keep me prisoner until I swore that the whole thing was a joke; they even threatened to kill me there and then. As for the priest, he menaced me with the direst wrath of the Church, both here and hereafter. I listened to all that they had to say, then silently revealed to them that my hand was upon an electric button. ‘You may not be aware, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘that the vaults under this building are packed with explosives. Here is an electric wire,’ I traced its course along the wall towards the door, ‘communicating with them.’ There was an instantaneous, almost mechanical movement from the neighbourhood of the door as I approached it. ‘I am a desperate man,’ I said, with my hand on the door, ‘and if I am interfered with, I set the current in motion. The result you can probably imagine. Any attempt to force the door from within will explode the mine. I wish you a very good night,’ and I was outside, and making the door fast, before any of them had recovered from their surprise.”

“But was it true about the dynamite and the wire?” asked Usk.

“There were certainly explosives in the cellar, and there was an electric light wire which led down to it. There was also a slight tincture of what I have since learnt to call bluff.” Mr Steinherz smiled genially.

“You must have been an awfully cool hand!”

“Coolness was needed in our circumstances. I calculated that we had nine hours’ grace at the outside. The laboratory was in a secluded part of the garden, the servants had been sent to bed, and the walls and door were strong. The only windows were in the roof. Unless any accident happened, my friends were safe until they were missed in the morning, and then it would take some little time to release them, and organise a pursuit. But, you will say, there was the train, which could be stopped at any point by telegraph. True, but it was Martin Richter, disguised in my fur coat and cap, who travelled by the train, and with him was the old nurse. We had calculated with the greatest nicety how far he could hope to get before the telegraph was set at work, and just before that point was reached he was to have the train stop at a wayside station, where horses were ready. We had arranged every imaginable expedient for baffling pursuit, and from thence he and the old woman were to travel by unfrequented routes to a quiet bay on my own estate, where the yacht was to be lying, having slipped out of harbour in the night. The train was merely a blind. For Konstantia, her maid and myself, I had procured English passports and circular tickets—money can do much—and we joined a large personally conducted party of returning tourists which was leaving Vindobona that night. The two girls had gone straight to the station as soon as they left the laboratory. The conductor was watching out for them, and added them to his flock without the slightest fuss or mystery. I followed, after making such changes in my personal appearance as might prevent a chance recognition—nothing theatrical, merely precautionary touches. We did not venture to show that we knew one another, and those hours of terror, which were bound to elapse before the frontier was reached, we spent in separate compartments. We crossed the frontier safely. So far my ruse was unsuspected, but I can’t describe to you the excitement that beset me all through that journey. The approach of an official gave me a bad half-second, for my dash for freedom might be brought to an ignominious end at any moment. But we reached Calais, crossed the Channel, and arrived safely at Charing Cross, without having exchanged a word since we left Vindobona. I would not trust even the conductor, who might afterwards put two and two together. Konstantia knew what she had to do. We took tickets for Bradcross, a decayed riverside suburb which had once been a great shipbuilding centre. I knew it well, for I had explored it thoroughly on a former visit to England—the same visit, by the way, in which I danced with your friend Mrs Sadleir, whose husband was then in the Government, at a ball at Trentham House—since to me its historical associations were even more attractive than the great modern dockyards elsewhere which had supplanted it. In that train we ventured at last to meet and speak, to discuss our future. You will ask, perhaps, why I had not made straight for Hamburg and America. There were two reasons. First, if the trick with regard to the special train should be discovered, that would be the route on which we should be looked for; and again, I was anxious to make assurance doubly sure by being married a second time. The ceremony in the laboratory, such as it was, though absolutely irregular, was so far valid that nothing short of an appeal to Rome could dissolve the marriage; but we had nothing to show for it, and if all the witnesses conspired to deny it, we were powerless. Moreover, Konstantia was a Protestant, and I, of course, had been brought up a Catholic. My idea was to throw ourselves upon the mercy of some English clergyman, explaining to him as much of our story as was necessary, no more, and ask his advice. At Bradcross, I thought, I could find quiet lodgings, where we might lie perdus while the hunt for us went on, for the three weeks’ residence which I understood was required by the English law before a marriage could be solemnised. We had to find a clergyman, a lodging, everything, and all without exciting suspicion. Fortunately, I spoke English as travelled princes are wont to do, fluently and without accent, and Konstantia with readiness, while the maid, Julie Schlesinger, her foster-sister, had picked up enough of it to find her way about. But we were a very forlorn trio as we descended the narrow flight of filthy steps that led down into the street from the Bradcross railroad platform, the girls carrying their satchels, and I the cloaks of the party.”

Mr Steinherz paused, and the slow smile crept over his face once more as he thought of that first day of freedom. From far below came the dull roll of traffic in the side-streets, with an occasional sharp scraping sound as a horse stumbled on the granite roadway, while in the square itself the approach of a hansom smote upon the ear like a dropping fire, becoming more and more insistent, only to be lost again suddenly in the general rumble. Maimie was listening with the intensest interest for what was to come. She knew that her mother’s maiden name had been Julia Slazenger, and she felt she was on the eve of further discoveries.

CHAPTER III.
THE BURDEN OF A SECRET.

Presently Mr Steinherz went on with his story, and Usk noticed a subtle change in his manner of speech. Hitherto, he had spoken “fluently and without accent,” as he had said himself, but with a certain precision of phrase that betrayed the man to whom English was not his native tongue; now he became by degrees the American once more.

“I knew Bradcross well enough to feel sure that the old parts of the town, which had been the goal of my former rambles, were not likely to afford any decent lodging for the girls, and as we reached the street, I turned to the right, intending to try our fortune in the newer and more respectable portion. But almost next door to the station there was a lecture-room or mechanics’ institute of some sort, and a placard on the notice-board caught my eye. It was the announcement of a Protestant lecture the following week, the chair to be taken by the Rev. Mr Cotton, Vicar of St Mary Windicotes. I knew the church well and had visited it often—it was the oldest in Bradcross—and this active controversialist promised to be the very man I needed, any way. We retraced our steps, Konstantia and the maid following uncomplainingly where I led, though it was evident they shrank from the narrow squalid streets through which we had to pass to reach the church. I knew where the clerk lived, and requested his wife to show the ladies the building while I called on the Vicar. The good man was at home, but at first I thought I had backed the wrong horse. He grew stiffer and stonier at every word as I explained my position. I learned afterwards that he had been victimised time and time again by persons representing themselves as Catholics desirous of embracing Protestantism, and deprived, naturally, of their former means of livelihood. But I persevered. I was a Catholic, I told him, and had married a Protestant against the wishes of my relations, who were certain to have the marriage declared invalid in order to separate us. Would he recommend us suitable lodgings, and give us his countenance until we could be married afresh according to English law? It makes me laugh yet when I remember how suspicious that good man was, and yet how completely I hoodwinked him. He was clearly relieved when he discovered that I was not in need of money, for I had been careful to furnish myself with several hundred pounds in English gold and notes; but he cross-questioned me most severely in order to ascertain whether there was any other impediment to our marriage than that of religion. Since the real state of affairs never occurred to him, naturally enough, I was able to satisfy him, but he had the prudence to consult his wife before surrendering finally, and she assured him that he was being had once more. However, they concluded to interview Konstantia, and we adjourned to the church, where we found the two poor girls, both of them tired clean out, sitting in one of the pews while the clerk’s wife related in a loud whisper the history of the place—of which, as she told it, they could hardly understand a word. Our story sounded suspicious, no doubt, but the Vicar’s wife forgot all of her suspicions the moment she saw Konstantia. The girl looked so very young and tired that the excellent lady was convinced of her truthfulness on the spot, and she hadn’t talked to her but a few minutes before she astonished us by insisting that she and Julie should take up their quarters at the Vicarage, while a lodging would be found for me elsewhere. Pursuit was to be baffled by the simple device of anglicising our names, so that Konstantia became Miss Constance Lily Garland, and I Mr Joseph Bertram (Mr Cotton advised me unhesitatingly to drop the ‘Maria’ as a badge of Popery, and I did so right away). There was more kindness yet in store for us. Mrs Cotton did not think it well for betrothed people to see too much of one another, and her husband, after inquiring into my tastes, got me a temporary post as foreign correspondence clerk to a great shipbuilding firm in the parish. Here I gave so much satisfaction that the firm were good enough to offer me a permanent appointment, and when I declined that, gave me a letter of recommendation to their correspondents in America, which I never presented. That three weeks at Bradcross was quite idyllic. After my day’s work, I would drop in, evenings, at the Vicarage, which lies back of the church. You approach it by a green gate in a high wall, and inside there is a little patch of grass and two or three lilac-bushes. Konstantia used to be waiting for me on the lawn, and there we would sit, never minding the smuts. If I haven’t said much about Konstantia, don’t think it’s because there’s nothing to say. She adored me in a real whole-hearted way, much more than was good for me, I am sure, and never so much as looked back regretfully at what she had given up for my sake. As for me, I was desperately in love yet with my own magnanimity in giving up so much for her, and her devotion pleased me. We really were perfectly happy those evenings, until Mrs Cotton called Konstantia in, and her husband came out to talk theology with me. I had to be stiffened up in my new Protestant principles, you see, and if I met that good man again, I would make him happy by assuring him that since those days I have never entered a Catholic church, any way. Well, the three weeks came to an end, and we were married in our English names, Julie signing the register as Julia Slazenger, but at the Vicar’s suggestion we all wrote our original names on the inside of the cover at the end of the book, with a reference to the proper page, and he pasted a piece of paper over them, so that it might be removed if there was ever any question as to our identity. I have been sorry all the time since that prudence obliged me to break off all relations with these good people as soon as we left Bradcross. You see, any accident would have enabled my family to trace us that far, so it was necessary to start a fresh trail, and I took our passages for New York in the name of Mr and Mrs Steinherz, without telling the Cottons of the change. Moreover, that we might be thoroughly demokratisch, as suited the country to which we were going, Julie became my wife’s friend, not her maid. We met with no difficulty in our second journey, and I expected none, for at my Bradcross employer’s I had read in a Pannonian paper the interesting news that ‘Prince Joseph of Arragon has sailed in his yacht Claudine on a foreign cruise. A vessel of the Imperial Navy has been detailed to escort his Royal Highness.’ That meant, I knew, that Martin Richter had done his work so well that I was believed to be on board the yacht, and a man-of-war had been sent in chase of her. On our voyage I fell in with a man named Logan, a shipbuilder in a small way in Rhode Island. Community of tastes drew us together, and I agreed to put in a week or two in his neighbourhood before settling down elsewhere. The truth was, I was waiting for Richter, with whom I had arranged a method of communication. As soon as I let him know where I was, he was to dispose of the yacht, either by firing her or running her ashore, and join me, bringing Konstantia’s old nurse with him. But instead of Martin came the news that the yacht was really lost with all hands. He had handled her with the most consummate skill, baffling the pursuing warship half round the world, but through some accident she got him cornered inside a reef in the Australian seas, with a gale coming on. He was staunch to the end, and actually tried to take the ship out by a passage that was practicable only for the native canoes, and that in fine weather. She struck, of course, and was beaten to pieces in the surf, and not a soul escaped. Our safety was secured—at that price. For days I could settle to nothing. In all my dreams Martin and I had worked together, and I could not feel able to do without him. Then my wife suggested that I should pay some attention to the hints Logan was continually throwing out. He wanted to have me join him in the business, for he was smart enough to see that I knew where I was when ships were in question. Besides, he wanted to marry Julie—she was a good-looking woman, and had picked up a lot from Konstantia—and he thought it would be pleasant if I bought the next lot to his, and built a house on it, that our wives might not be separated. The comicality of the idea took my fancy, and I went into business with him. I made things hum in that shipyard, and poor old Logan got frightened. I would go ahead in spite of all his forebodings, and at last, at his desire, I bought him out. We were just as friendly as ever. He was free of the yard yet, and loafed around all day, prophesying that my ships would go to the bottom as soon as they were off the slips; but they didn’t, and when he died he left me his daughter’s guardian. His wife had died before that, and Maimie became our child ’most the same as Félicia. I went on inventing and improving, and making a pile—not because I wanted it, but because the thing just happened. We had a boy, and he died, and when Félicia was six years old my wife died, and I have gone on making money and fighting to keep out of society. And now I guess I’m through,” and Mr Steinherz laughed to see Usk’s start of surprise at this complete and startling return to his ordinary mode of speech.

“Then your family have actually no idea that you are alive?”

“Not the slightest. They advertised their undying grief at my loss, and boomed that shipwreck all it was worth, for it cleared off a scandal in the most satisfactory way. The surprise wedding was buried in oblivion, and when a whisper of the truth got around, it was promptly silenced. Naturally, you couldn’t expect them allude to it on the tablet at Vindobona, though all of the other remarks proper to the occasion are there.”

“And no one in America ever penetrated the secret?”

“Just one man, and I was in deadly fear when I found it out. It was our mutual friend Hicks. He got it in his head that I was a Hamburg shipping clerk that the police were watching out for, who had forged his employer’s name and eloped with his daughter, and he set to work to trace my movements right back to my starting-point. Pretty soon he found he was on the wrong track, and then a chance word from a friend in Vindobona sent him flying along. The scandal, the rumoured marriage, the escaped Prince—there it all was, and if a mysterious hint in his paper hadn’t suddenly shown me what he was aiming at, so that I took Konstantia along, and we just threw ourselves on his mercy, he would have made his own fortune and the ‘Crier’s’ by revealing all of the story. He took pity upon us and kept his mouth shut, and he and I have been friends ever since. I have appointed him Félicia’s trustee in case of my death.”

“And you don’t intend to be reconciled to your family?”

“Why should I? They are all thoroughly happy, believing me dead, and enjoying my property. If my son had lived—well, I don’t know, but I guess I would have laid things before him when he came of age, and given him his choice. Florian left only a daughter behind him, and Ramon has three, and no sons. There seems a fate against us Albrets. If he had concluded to claim such rights as will be mine on Ramon’s death, I daresay we could have fixed it. With the pile I can show, there wouldn’t be much difficulty in having them recognise my marriage. The Emperor could do it, with Ramon’s consent, and if I greased the wheels a bit, Félicia would pretty soon be a Princess of Arragon.”

Maimie drew in her breath sharply. Usk spoke with some hesitation.

“Please don’t think me officious, sir—it’s quite against myself, you know—but do you think it is fair to keep her in ignorance—the Princess, I mean?”

“Miss Félicia Steinherz, you mean,” corrected Félicia’s father. “I think it so far fair that if the Emperor, and my brother Ramon, and all of my family, were to kneel to me to-morrow, and entreat me to come along back, I would refuse, and forbid them to mention the subject to her.”

“Then you feel that your experiment was a success?”

“I don’t pretend that I never felt the difference between the gayest and most polite society in Europe and that of a one-horse American coast-town, and the smart people in New York who would have liked to welcome me with open arms as a multi-millionaire haven’t compensated me much. But I made a determined break out of that elegant prison of mine, just to lead my own life,—a better life, I may fairly say, than that old one,—and if it was to do, I would do it again. A succession of such marriages as mine might yet save the great houses with which I have the honour to be connected; but they won’t see it so. I am glad to have cut myself off from them.”

“But should not Miss Steinherz know the truth?”

“No, sir, she should not.” The words came crisply. “If I told Félicia in the morning all of what I have told you, by the evening, prompted by that little firebrand Maimie, she would have cabled to Vindobona, ‘What price full recognition?’ I did my best to make her as democratic as we thought ourselves, sent her to the most typical American school and college I could find, and she comes back with the most consuming ambition for social distinction that I ever saw in a woman. It comes partly from the way girls are brought up in the States—but if that was all, it might expend itself in trampling under foot every male creature that comes near her. It is mostly the Hohenstaufen blood coming out. She would a million times rather be a poor relation in Ramon’s priest-ridden household than an American heiress of no particular birth—or so she thinks now. With so many needy archdukes to be provided for, it would be easy enough to fix her up with a husband, and she would be plunged back in the life from which I broke away.”

“But if she preferred it?”

“I don’t take any stock in her preferences. When I concluded to Americanise my family, Lord Usk, I guess I began a generation too late. I should have taken myself in hand first, for I have never acquired that subservience to my womenfolk which the true American glories in. The neighbours set my wife down as a domestic martyr, I believe; and I am free to confess that if she had thought less of the honour I had done her, we might both of us have been happier. But Félicia has grown up in full knowledge of her rights as an American woman, and a pretty strong determination to see that she gets them; and I will acknowledge to you that when we fall out the forces on either side are more evenly balanced than I care about. I give my orders and stick to them, and gain the victory that way; but the peace-offerings afterwards come expensive. Can you wonder that I have no particular use for a storm over this?”

“But supposing that she should ever find out——?”

“How’d she do it? But I have watched out for that. When she marries, her fortune will remain in the hands of trustees, though settled strictly on herself. If any other person, either her husband or any member of my family, claims to get control of the money by virtue of any family or state law, I have fixed it that all but the merest pittance will go to the Mayor of New York for the time being in trust for the beautifying of the city. I guess Tammany won’t have such a chance go by, and my noble relations must just climb down.”

“I think you are very wise,” said Usk slowly.

“But that’s only in case she marries a foreigner. What I should fairly admire would be to have her marry an Englishman. I thought of an American first; but where would I find one that wouldn’t lie down and let Félicia walk over him if there were ructions? Maybe you see now why I have encouraged you to visit here?”

“Because you think I could be trusted to keep Miss Steinherz in order?”

“Now don’t get mad. Your feelings were not just exactly a secret, you know, from the first day you came. The actual fact is that Hicks, knowing my wishes, brought you along that you might fall in love with Félicia, and you did, right away.”

“Perhaps Miss Steinherz knows your wishes too?”

“It is my mature opinion, sir, that she does not. If she did, I incline to think they would not stand much chance of fulfilment. But you are on a different platform, and I am talking with you as a business man. I would like to marry my daughter to an Englishman of sufficiently high position to make my family think twice before they meddled with him. You seem to me to fill the bill pretty well. So far as I understand, you are a young man needing money and some one to shove you along, and in marrying Félicia you would get both. I guess that tremendous ambition of hers would justify its existence then—she would see you Premier or die. Think it over.”

“What is there to think about?” demanded Usk hotly. “It’s not as if you had told me anything that could change my feelings. Félicia is Félicia, and I can’t say more than that. I should be proud and thankful to marry her this moment if she would have me. But supposing the truth ever comes out, how can I face her if she asks me how I dared to keep her in ignorance, when she might have made a far more splendid match?”

“How would it ever come out? You won’t tell her, Hicks won’t tell her, I won’t tell her—and there’s no other person knows the secret. It would need a series of most improbable coincidences to bring it to light, any way. As things are now, you are a most suitable match for her—rank on your side, the dollars on hers. Of course, if you are afraid to go ahead, just because the unlikely will maybe happen, I can’t help it.”

“I only want to act fairly by her. If I felt she could justly reproach me——”

“If she does, just go down town for an hour or so, and bring her along a bracelet when you come back,” was the unsympathetic reply. “Or it might even run to a necklace, but you would better reserve that for a pretty large emergency. Well, go home and think it over.”

“I don’t want to think it over. If you will only give your consent on condition that I keep silence, what can I do?”

“I don’t see but you’ll have to give in,” smiled Mr Steinherz, “being the man you are, and in your present state of high emotion.”

“Unless you meant me to consult my father——?”

“Not at all. I have the highest respect for your parents, but I understand they both look at everything from a lofty moral standpoint. They would think it my duty to do about forty million things that I don’t incline to do, and that would tire me. No, my first reason for telling you all of this was that it seemed playing it pretty low down to put you in a position in which some extraordinary chance might spring the family history on you without warning. And, of course, you might object to mix the Plantagenet blood you Mortimers are all so proud of with that of Albret and Hohenstaufen. You feel yourselves on a level with the royal houses of Europe, I believe—even leaving out of account the Continental adventures of your father and uncle, and the new lustre they have shed upon your name?”

“May I ask your other reasons?” asked Usk, his blood tingling at the tone of genial sarcasm. It was clear that Mr Steinherz did not share Mr Hicks’s enthusiasm over Count Mortimer’s marriage.

“There’s only one, but I won’t tell you that right now. You see this envelope? I will seal it and direct it to you, and you can open it this day six months, or at my death. The enclosure will explain itself.”

Usk put the envelope into his pocket, struck by the change in his host’s manner, but the momentary gloom passed quickly.

“Think things over to-night, as I said. We will meet at the club to-morrow at eleven, and you can tell me what you have concluded to do. I have been frank with you, and I look to you to be frank with me. And I’ll make just this one exception to your vow of silence. You may tell all of the circumstances to your uncle, Count Mortimer, if he should be in Europe any time. Don’t trust them to paper. He is a man of the world, and will fix you up with the best advice. I say this because Hicks asked me some time back to nominate him as a second trustee, if he would consent to act. And one thing yet. If by any grievous necessity you are forced to have the secret become public property, face it out boldly. You would rather marry the Yankee shipbuilder’s daughter than the morganatic daughter of a Prince of Arragon, wouldn’t you? So I thought. Well, remember that my marriage was not morganatic. I made it just as legal and binding every way as I could, and there is to be no half-recognition. If Félicia is not a Princess of Arragon, she is Miss Steinherz of Rhode Island. I leave her mother’s name in your care. All of the proofs that you’ll need are in Hicks’s hands—papers, portraits, little things that belonged to my mother, the list of witnesses of the Vindobona marriage, my own sworn and attested statement of the facts—Hicks has everything in charge.”

“What has Mr Hicks got in charge?” asked a voice gaily as Mr Steinherz opened the door leading into the sitting-room. Maimie stood at the side-table, pouring out a glass of iced water from the jug which was placed there in compliment to American tastes. Anxious to hear as much as she could, she had found it quite impossible to escape when the voices approached the door, and had barely succeeded in reaching the table.

“What are you doing here this time of night?” asked Mr Steinherz.

“Why, I have been sitting up,” said Maimie glibly, “and I guess my book wasn’t soothing enough. I don’t feel the least bit like going to sleep, any way, and the water in my room is just torrid, so I remembered this pitcher here, and came to get some.”

She faced her guardian boldly, with bright eyes and flushed face. “I just hope he won’t have me produce the book that proved so interesting,” she thought, and then became aware that the glass in her hand was shaking visibly, for the long crouching in a cramped position had left her deadly cold. “Like must cure like!” she said to herself, and drank off the water with a smile to Mr Steinherz. “I’d like to have you tell Félicia that she mustn’t pass along her nerve-attacks to me,” she added aloud. “What with her headache and that book, I’m so nervous I could dance.”

“Unless you have a particular wish for Lord Usk as a partner, I would advise you to go right to your own room, and do it there,” said Mr Steinherz, and Maimie was thankful to escape. Passing Félicia’s door, she caught the monotonous tones of the weary maid, who was reading her mistress to sleep, and heard also a pettish voice say, “What nonsense you make of it, Pringle! I believe you are going right asleep. I had just lost myself, and now you have waked me up again.”

“Maybe I ought to go and massage her head,” said Maimie thoughtfully to herself, “but I guess I’ll have Pringle go on suffering this once. I want to think. If Félicia only knew! But if I told her now, the same house wouldn’t hold her and her father. And I can’t tell Lord Usk about it, because he knows already, nor talk about it with Pappa Steinherz, because he would know I’d been listening, and it’s no use thinking of making it public, because he would be fit to deny all of the story, and I suppose it couldn’t be proved without him. When I concluded to find out why he was so set on marrying Félicia off to this lord, I didn’t ever expect this. It’s tremendous. For—the—land’s—sake!” she spoke slowly and emphatically, “what a boom I could work up if we were back in New York! But here I don’t see I can do anything with it any way. I guess I’ll just have to save it up in case Prince Malasorte should show his face again. I might fix things then so’s it would fall to him to charge it on Mr Steinherz. But what am I to say about my listening? I’m not ashamed of it a cent—though I did feel awfully mean when he talked about his love-affairs—but some folks would think it cast a doubt on my evidence. What I want is some queer fact that would be likely to set my wits to work until I puzzled out the thing for myself. But suppose there isn’t anything really. Suppose Mr Steinherz dreamed all of the story—suppose he has lost his mind! Oh, I can’t endure this! There must be something right away back that I could remember, to give me the clue I want. St Mary Windicotes! Where have I ever heard that name before?”

She sat for a while pondering the question, then sprang up, and throwing open a huge trunk in a corner, plunged her arm to the very bottom, and brought out a small old-fashioned Prayer-book. She turned to the fly-leaf. On it were written the words, “Julia Slazenger, from her sincere friend Marian Cotton. St Mary Windicotes Vicarage, May 18th, 18—.”

“I knew it!” she cried, “and Aunt Connie used to tell Fay and me all about it evenings when we were babies. We thought it must be a mean sort of a place, but she seemed real fond of it, and I would know it anywhere. I’ll go right there, and look up that register for myself. Charing Cross, Mr Steinherz said—that’s somewhere down town, I know—and Bradcross is a suburb, so I guess it can’t be far away. I’ll take that message about Félicia’s shoes to the store myself, instead of having Pringle go, and then I’ll go way down there without any other person’s knowing. I will find out whether it’s a dream or not.”

CHAPTER IV.
HIT AND MISS.

“Oh, the dear cunning things! They’re just too sweet for words!”

Maimie was standing before the gate of St Mary Windicotes churchyard, contemplating, with a rapt expression of ecstasy, the two huge laurel-wreathed skulls, carved in stone, now hideously blackened with time, which crowned the high gate-posts. The clerk’s wife, unaware that in seeing these skulls the visitor was fulfilling one of her dearest and creepiest early hopes, felt that the grisly objects were not being treated with proper respect.

“They ain’t no figures of fun, miss. It’s what we all ’ave to come to,” she observed reprovingly. “Not but what old Mr Cowell opposite did say, when there was a talk of takin’ of ’em down and puttin’ up common stone balls like in their place, ‘Never a foot do I set within the church-door again if them death’s-’eads is took down,’ says he. ‘I’ve see ’em all my life as boy and man, and the church wouldn’t be the church without ’em.’ But there’s no call for strangers to be a-lovin’ of ’em, but only to remember their latter end, as may be sooner than they think.”

They were now walking up the path, itself flagged with gravestones, which led to the church-door, and Maimie noticed with something of a shudder the embattled rows of monuments on either hand, of all sizes and shapes and all manner of deviation from the perpendicular, and the ranges of displaced stones which lined the churchyard walls. For the moment she felt that she hated the place. How could people in their senses have had a wedding there? It was bound to turn out badly.

“And in that very pew there, as is now cleared away”—the clerk’s wife was concluding with much impressiveness a speech containing valuable historical information—“my mother see with her own eyes the great Dook of Wellington sit hevery Trinity Monday, for to ’ear the appointed sermon.”

This information was generally received with bated breath by visitors to the church, and the good woman was conscious of very natural disgust when Maimie responded to it merely with a casual “Is that so, really?” They had paused in the porch while the guide pointed out the modern representative of the fateful pew, but now she led the way in with a jangle of keys and a contemptuous sniff. Maimie devoured the scene with eager eyes. The fine dark oak carving in the chancel, the small oval window representing the Nativity, and the large window above it, decorated in stripes of crude colour—she knew them all, but there was something wanting.

“There ought to be pictures of Moses and Aaron there!” she cried, pointing to the chancel, “and right high up on that wall a big shadowy picture of some old king or queen, in a great gold frame.”

“Well, now, to think of you knowin’ that!” the clerk’s wife was somewhat mollified; “and you must ’a been rare and small when you left the parish, miss, for me not to remember you.”

“I’ve never been here in my life before, but I heard all about the church in America,” said Maimie breathlessly. “What’s come to the pictures?”

“Why, Moses and Aaron is there still, miss, hid out of sight behind that there bed-furniture, as I calls it—and as like as two peas to my aunt’s best bed, as lived out Earlham way,” pointing to an elaborate curtain behind the communion-table. “That’s the new Vicar’s doin’”—Maimie felt her heart sink—“and her Majesty Queen Hann and the Royal Harms is both took down and made away with—despisin’ of dignities, as we’re told shall be.”

“But the registers are here yet, I suppose? and I can see about this marriage, any way?” asked Maimie anxiously, for the clerk was coming up the church, unorthodox corduroys marring the effect of his professional black coat. She had discovered from a board over his door that he was an undertaker in a small way on week-days, and it had been necessary to send a boy to summon him, while his wife led the way to the church.

“Oh yes, miss. No one can’t do nothing to them. Here’s Clegg just a-comin’. You step this way,” and Maimie was ushered into the vestry, a small room panelled throughout in dark oak. Light was admitted by two windows close under the ceiling, and the decorations were confined to a table of the Degrees of Affinity, and another, quite as long and a good deal more complicated, of burial fees. Presently the clerk arrived, and opened a huge safe built in the thickness of the wall and masked by the wainscoting.

“What might be the year of the marriage you was wishin’ to find, miss?” he asked, and Maimie noticed that the woman looked suspiciously at her when she answered. She had determined that she would give no clue to her identity, in case some evil chance should lead Mr Steinherz to revisit the church, but she foresaw that it might be difficult to maintain this reticence.

“And ’ave you any idea what part of the year would be likely, miss?” asked the clerk again, selecting a volume and laying it upon the table.

“May, somewhere near the 18th,” was the reply, greeted with a gasp by the clerk’s wife.

“And the names, miss? There was a good few weddin’s just about that time.”

“Joseph Bertram to Constance Lily Garland.” Maimie’s voice was shaking a little, but her excitement was nothing to that of the clerk’s wife.

“Now you just tell me who you are,” she said resolutely, interposing her substantial person between Maimie and the register. “You ain’t neither of them two foreign young ladies, that I’m certain, and you won’t tell me as you’re Mrs Bertram’s daughter—Miss Garland as was? What have you got to do with it?”

“My mother was at the wedding, and signed the register,” Maimie admitted.

“Then you ain’t got nothink to do with Mr Bertram’s family?—though why they should think to interfere at this time of day beats me.”

“’Ere it is, miss,” said the clerk. “Joseph Bertram to Constance Lily Garland, by the Vicar, May 19th. Do you wish a copy?”

Moving aside unwillingly, the woman allowed Maimie to approach the table. There was no question of a dream or hallucination here, at any rate. There was the entry, and as Maimie turned over the pages, there also was the slight discoloration of the inside of the cover which showed where a slip of paper had been pasted upon it. She ran her finger along the line, and resisted an eager desire to try and tear the slip off. When the clerk asked again whether she would like a certified copy of the entry, she was obliged to pause before answering. Without the addition which that piece of paper held concealed, the certificate was of comparatively little value; and yet, supposing that by some accident or otherwise the church should be destroyed and the register with it, might not the copy just suffice to establish the marriage? Knowing nothing of Somerset House and its requirements, Maimie saw herself the dea ex machinâ in the restoration of Mr Steinherz to his original position, and replied unhesitatingly that she would have a copy. While the clerk was making it out, she stood looking with a vague awe at the pile of registers remaining in the safe. Was there still among those dusty volumes with their ragged edges the one which, as Mrs Steinherz had told with bated breath, contained records of many burials distinguished by the letters “Pl.,” denoting a victim of the Great Plague? But the clerk’s wife was not content to waste such an opportunity, and interrupted her meditations.

“And so your ma—Miss Slazenger as she were then—signed there, did she, miss?” indicating the rudely formed letters in which a hand accustomed only to the German character had inscribed an unfamiliar name. “Mrs Cotton she took to her wonderful, just the same as to Miss Garland. It do seem a pity as you shouldn’t have come before she left the parish, after all the many times she have said to me, ‘Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘I would give a deal to know what become of Mr and Mrs Bertram after all, that I would.’”

“Then Mrs Cotton is not dead?” asked Maimie eagerly.

“Why, whatever give you that hidea, miss? The Vicar ’ad a stroke and give up the parish, and they lives down at Whitcliffe now. This last summer as ever was, they arsk Clegg and me down for the day, and took us for a ride in a carriage, and give us tea in the garden, just like ladies and gentlemen—though if you arsk me, I say give me an ’ouse, or even a harbour, the grass bein’ damp and spiders about.”

“Could you give me Mrs Cotton’s direction?”

“To be sure I could, miss—Windicotes, Cavendish Road, Whitcliffe-on-Sea. But, miss, if you’re lookin’ for witnesses to swear to that there weddin’, don’t you forget that me and Clegg was there just as much as Mrs Cotton and the Vicar, him givin’ the bride away and me ready with a bottle of salts in case of the ladies’ bein’ overcome. Why, Mrs Cotton she says to me herself that morning, ‘Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘don’t you let your Tommy go to school to-day, and I’ll make it up to him’; and if she didn’t set him to play marbles just outside the churchyard gate, sayin’ that if he saw a cab drive up, or so much as any strangers comin’ along, he was to run in and whisper to her at once, ‘and then, Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘you and me will fasten the church-door and pile the forms against it until Mr Cotton have finished the service, sooner nor let those dear young people be separated before they’re properly married, for it’s in my mind as Mr Bertram’s cruel relations will try to part ’em at the last.’ And I was that worked up with the thought of Miss Garland bein’ dragged off shriekin’ to one of them convents, and that nice young gentleman her ’usband—for a fine military-lookin’ gentleman he was, though a trifle ’aughty in speakin’—throwed into chains and a dungeon, that I ’id my broom be’ind the church-door, and I was ready to fight for ’em, I was. Not that anythink come of it, after all.” Mrs Clegg spoke with evident disappointment.

“I’ll remember,” said Maimie. “But don’t tell any one that I’ve been here, any way.” She folded up the certificate and placed it in her pocket-book, gave the clerk his fee, and prepared to go. “The cruel relations may show up yet, you know.”

“So they may, miss, but you may depend upon me and Clegg.” The clerk’s wife was now escorting her out of the church. “I see you know all about that bit of paper at the end of the book there, which I understand there’s property dependin’ on it. Now you’ll maybe ’ardly believe it, miss, but neither me nor Clegg have ever mentioned that slip to a livin’ soul, least of all to the new Vicar, as ain’t ashamed to walk about the parish in petticoats, and wearin’ a Roman mitre on his ’ead.”

The description was startling, but Maimie recognised the object of it when she was walking past the vicarage, having rid herself of Mrs Clegg by means of a gratuity. The green door in the high wall opened, and a tall thin man came out, wearing a cassock and a curious head-dress that seemed a cross between a Tam-o’-Shanter and a mortar-board. A youthful voice from the other side of the narrow street inquired shrilly, “Where did you get that ’at?” and a small boy scampered away as fast as his legs would carry him, while the new Vicar, with the air of a martyr, walked rapidly towards the church. As for Maimie, she stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to restrain a peal of hysterical laughter, and turned her steps hastily towards the station. Her experiences of the morning seemed altogether too absurd and incongruous for real life, and in spite of the strained excitement with which she had set forth on her quest, the clergyman’s martyrlike aspect put the finishing touch to her helpless mirth. When she was safely in the train, and had allowed herself the luxury of a long laugh over this anti-climax to her adventure, she became suddenly serious, however.

“Now let me see,” she said severely to herself; “what have I gained, any way? Well, I know that Mr Steinherz and Aunt Connie were married at that church, and that there’s a slip of paper which may cover their secret. And I’ve found three witnesses certainly—four if the old Vicar’s mind isn’t affected by his stroke—who can testify to the marriage. I guess it’s just as well that the gentleman in the ‘Roman mitre’ wasn’t the Vicar when Pappa Steinherz went to enlist his sympathies. I don’t believe he has any; he might even have assisted to drag poor Aunt Connie shrieking to a convent. Well, but after all, it’s quite possible yet for Mr Steinherz to have made out that he was Prince Joseph of Arragon when he isn’t, or even to have invented the tale just to impress Lord Usk. I don’t think so, but I’m set on looking things in the face. Any way, I guess I can’t do anything towards clearing up the affair without Mr Steinherz’s help, or else the use of those relics that Mr Hicks has in charge. How am I to fix things? I have no pull on Pappa Steinherz, and if I make him mad he’ll just take Fay right away from me, and break my heart. I’ll have to wait. And yet something ought to be done right now, or some of those old folks that can swear to the marriage will be dying off. I wonder if I couldn’t take their evidence. No, I’m pretty certain it would need to be sworn to before a judge, and I daren’t have any other person come into the secret, even if I knew a judge to speak to. Well, I guess I must sit tight, and that’s all just now.”

Nevertheless, when she left the train at Charing Cross, and took a hansom mechanically to drive to the hotel, her brain busied itself with a fresh problem, which was yet an old one, the question of preventing an engagement between Usk and Félicia. Such an engagement would put an end once for all to her ambitious schemes for Félicia’s future, which seemed perfectly feasible in the light of the revelations of the night before. Not that either Maimie or Félicia herself would have cared much for the engagement, had there been a prospect of a more brilliant alliance, but it would give Mr Steinherz a vantage-ground of which he would make full use. Once Félicia was engaged, he would see that the engagement was fulfilled. He would hurry on the marriage, and never relax his vigilance until his daughter had become Viscountess Usk, and Félicia, in her present mood, would offer no opposition. The prospect of escaping from his tutelage, and feeling that she was her own mistress (Usk did not count), was far more attractive to her than Maimie’s lofty hopes. It seemed that there was no help for it, and Maimie decided reluctantly to bow to circumstances, and make herself so agreeable to Usk that he could not but approve of her friendship with Félicia. As she came to this decision, she was startled by meeting Usk and Mr Steinherz face to face. Her driver was trying to cross Oxford Street in the direction of Bloomsbury, but there was a block in the traffic, and an inexorable policeman detained the hansom close to one of those islands of refuge on which strange groups assemble by force of circumstances. Here stood Mr Steinherz and Usk, unable to penetrate the solid phalanx of vehicles which confronted them, and waiting with what patience they might while the policeman marshalled a train of old ladies and country cousins in readiness for a break in the line. They were the last people Maimie would have chosen to meet at such a moment, when that dreadful certificate seemed to be burning in her pocket.

“You are out pretty early, Maimie,” said Mr Steinherz.

“I——I came out on an errand for Félicia, way down in the City,” stammered Maimie, remembering for the first time that the errand had never been performed.

“You should have mailed the order. I don’t choose to have you running around for Félicia. You look just tired out.”

“I wish you had been with us just now, Miss Logan,” said Usk, changing the subject hastily, either on account of Maimie’s evident embarrassment or because he could not bear to hear Félicia blamed. “We came across the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim and an aide-de-camp poking about Trafalgar Square in mufti. Wasn’t it a good thing I had studied him so long yesterday, so that I could point him out to Mr Steinherz? But I did wish you and Miss Steinherz were there.”

Usk spoke fast and somewhat nervously. Maimie read in his face that the night had made no change in his feelings. He was prepared to marry Félicia and keep her in ignorance of her father’s descent, and Mr Steinherz was well pleased with his decision. Maimie felt that she hated them both.

“By the way,” said Mr Steinherz, “I guess I am in Félicia’s black books yet?” Maimie nodded, for she had left Félicia comfortably established in her room, with no intention of showing herself for the present. “Well, we lunch Lord Usk to-day, and he would be real sorry to miss her. Do you happen to know anything she wants right now?”

“Why, I guess one of those gold girdles with turquoise bosses would fix up her new Paris tea-gown to perfection,” said Maimie slowly, adding vengefully to herself, as she saw Usk redden, “I won’t let you down easy this time, Pappa Steinherz—talking that way about Fay before her best young man!”

“Then maybe you’ll intimate that I’m bringing along something of the sort when you get back,” said Mr Steinherz.

“Why, certainly. I guess you’ll find Regent Street the best place,” cried Maimie, as the cab moved on. It was some satisfaction to her to see the disappointment on Usk’s face. “He’s death on getting it over,” she said to herself; “and now Mr Steinherz will have him trail half-way round London before coming in.”

But her satisfaction was dashed with dismay when she remembered again the pair of dainty high-heeled slippers still reposing in her satchel. How could she account to Félicia for the morning which was to have been devoted to changing them? If she refused to give an explanation, or offered a lame one, she knew Félicia would never rest until she had solved the mystery. And if she guessed that Maimie did not wish Mr Steinherz to know what she had been doing, she would appeal to him sooner than allow herself to be foiled. There was a relentless malevolence about Félicia on these occasions, when Maimie was trying to deceive her purely for her own good, which Maimie felt deeply.

“I don’t dare go back without changing them,” she sighed to herself, and standing up, began an agitated colloquy with the driver.

“Can you get back to the City from here, hackman, right away?” she asked him. “There’s something I have forgotten.”

The man asked where she wanted to go, and then opined that the shop could easily be reached by way of Holborn. He turned at the first opportunity, and as they approached the corner Maimie caught sight of Mr Steinherz and Usk a second time, looking at some books in a shop-window. They had not gone far towards Regent Street, and Maimie laughed to herself as she thought of Usk’s impatience. When she looked round again, her attention was attracted by a man standing on the pavement at the corner, who was gazing—glaring was the word that occurred to her—across the street at the bookshop opposite. He was elderly and poorly dressed, and evidently a foreigner, with a ragged beard and unkempt hair.

“An Italian,” said Maimie to herself. “How he looks! like a lion stalking his prey. What can he be staring at, any way?”

As the thought crossed her mind, the man dashed suddenly into the street in front of the hansom, and seeming not to hear the lively remonstrances of the driver, who was obliged to pull up pointblank, threaded his way through the traffic to the opposite corner. Maimie, watching him carelessly through the side-window, saw him reach the pavement. What followed was done all in a moment. He took one step forward, there was the flash of something long and shining which fell and rose and fell again, and Mr Steinherz sank heavily against Usk. That was all Maimie saw, for her wild scream sent the horse, already startled by the sudden check, tearing down Holborn, and it seemed to her an eternity before the driver succeeded in stopping it, and turning back again at her frenzied entreaty. The irate policemen whose orders they had disregarded in their wild career, and the other drivers whose destruction they had sought to compass, took no notice of them as they returned; every one was running or looking in one direction. Even at that moment Maimie was conscious of a feeling of wonder as the crowd gathered. People came hurrying out of shops, pouring down side streets, rushing up from behind, and very soon the hansom could go no farther. Maimie waited in agony while the driver tried to force his horse through the crowd, and found herself the recipient of the confidence bestowed on a friend by a boy with a baker’s basket.

“I see ’im come runnin’ like mad, brandishin’ ’is drippin’ knife—as good as a theaytre. ’E run strite into the middle of the street, all among the ’orses, rarght in front of the dray. Blowed if ’e didn’t ’it out at the ’orses with the knife as ’e went down. ’E was gyme!”

“Say, who is it? what has happened?” gasped Maimie to a policeman, who found even his authority insufficient to clear a passage for him into the midst of the crowd, and was forced to content himself with ordering the people on its outskirts to move on. He answered civilly, and with obvious self-importance.

“An Eye-talian, miss, supposed to be a lunatic, that stabbed an American gentleman, and then threw himself under the ’orses’ feet.”

“But Mr Steinherz—the gentleman who was stabbed?” she cried. “I saw it all. What about him? He is my guardian.”

“You saw it, miss? Then I must trouble you for your name and address. You’ll be wanted at the inquest. They’re takin’ him to the ’orspital.”

“Oh, where is it? You’ll show me, officer, won’t you? But I guess I ought to go and fetch his daughter. You’ll let the hack through?”

“It’s no good, miss. I doubt myself if he’ll live to reach the gate. You had better send the cab away, and I’ll take you to the ’orspital.”

“Tell me about it, any way. What did you see?” Maimie asked feverishly, as the policeman pushed a way for her through the crowd, after she had dismissed the cab.

“All I saw as I come along Oxford Street was ten or twelve people round an old party as I thought was preachin’ on the pavement. I went to move ’em on, and a lady bursts out and ketches ’old of me that tight I couldn’t move. ‘Oh, policeman, policeman!’ she says; ‘murder! save him! fetch a doctor, quick!’ and ’olds me tight all the time, while the old chap goes on jawin’ to the crowd about a righteous vengeance and the task of his ’ole life, and his father bein’ shot and his mother turned out of doors in a winter’s night, and defyin’ anybody to arrest him, though he’d thrown down his knife. And then, all of a sudden, while I was strugglin’ to get free from the lady, he give a great yell and cried out, ‘It’s the wrong man—not the Archduke!’ and caught up a long knife with blood drippin’ from it off of the pavement, and went for the people. They made room for him pretty quick, I can tell you, and he rushed across into ’Olborn, and me after him. You’d have said he was mad if you’d seen him charge the traffic just like an army, as I did, and he’d near got through when he was knocked down by a dray. And there’s no need to take him to ’orspital. And what was it you saw, miss?”

“I just saw him standing on the side-walk and watching, and then he ran across and pulled out something, and struck—and struck—and then——” Maimie’s voice failed her.

“Case of mistaken hidentity,” remarked the policeman complacently, “but it’s not often those foreigners make mistakes. Now it’s a curious thing——”

But Maimie was not destined to receive further enlightenment from his stores of wisdom, for they had arrived at the hospital gate by this time, and Usk was coming out of it, looking like a man who was going to be hanged.

“He’s gone!” he said heavily, in answer to Maimie’s gasp of inquiry—“died just as they carried him in. But you’re here—and you know all about it—you’ll be able to tell Félicia. I didn’t know how to break it to her. I was trying to think what I should say if I had to tell Phil that our father was dead. But you’re a woman, you know how to put things, you can soften it to her——”

“Oh, I can’t! I daren’t!” cried Maimie, shrinking back. Then she remembered in a flash that if she threw the burden of the disclosure upon Usk, it would be a tacit recognition of his position with regard to Félicia. No, he was not engaged to her yet, and if Maimie could help it, the engagement should not take place.

“I guess I’ll have to do it,” she said resolutely.

“I’ll take you back to the hotel,” said Usk. “The policeman will call a hansom, for I’m sure you can’t walk.”

“Tell me just what happened. Who was the man?” asked Maimie breathlessly, when they were in the cab.

“I can’t tell you. It was all so awfully sudden. We were looking in at a shop-window, when suddenly some one shouted out something in Italian behind us—about his father and mother, I think—and I heard two blows struck, and Mr Steinherz gave a kind of gasp, and fell against me. I tried to lift him up and stop the bleeding, and people were standing round staring, and the man who had done it kept talking, talking, in English. But when I got Mr Steinherz’s head on my shoulder, so that his face showed, the man gave a yell and dashed away. They say there’s no doubt he mistook him for the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim, and it’s curious that last night I noticed there was a distinct likeness between them from behind, but not the very least in front.”

“I would just love to tell you that I know exactly as much as you do!” thought Maimie enviously. Aloud she merely said, “And Mr Steinherz?”

“A doctor came up, and said he was stabbed in the lungs, and couldn’t possibly live. He tried to speak, though the doctor told him not, but he could only get out a few disjointed words. And just as they got him into the receiving-room he died.”

They had reached the hotel now, and Usk waited in the sitting-room while Maimie went to look for Félicia. It was more than an hour before she came back, and in the interval Usk was a prey to all kinds of interruptions. In order to spare the girls, he made all the arrangements he could without direct authority from them; other matters he put aside resolutely, refusing to allow Miss Steinherz to be troubled at present. When Maimie returned she looked so old and harassed that he was shocked.

“How is she?” he asked anxiously.

“Quieter now; I’ve given her a sleeping-draught. But it’s been terrible. Her nerves are pretty highly strung, and she screamed fit to make your blood run cold. And I know there are millions of things to do, and I can’t tell the way they fix them over here. Say, Lord Usk, you oughtn’t to be here, any way; people will talk, you know they will. Folks in England are so censorious. Do, please, go right away. It makes me nervous to see you there.”

Usk obeyed, with apparent willingness, for a splendid idea had entered his head. He went straight to the nearest post-office, and telegraphed to the Marchioness of Caerleon at Llandiarmid Castle.

“‘Terrible accident to Mr Steinherz. Daughter quite prostrate. Can you come?’” He read over the message. “That’ll bring her,” he muttered. “And I never knew the people yet that the mater couldn’t comfort when they were in trouble.”

As he put the change into his pocket he felt a paper there. Taking it out, he found it was the envelope Mr Steinherz had given him the night before, to be opened after his death. The time had come already, he realised with awe. Stepping aside, he opened the envelope, and drew out a cutting from a newspaper.

“Great consternation has been caused in august circles in Vindobona by the reported reappearance of the Grey Lady of the Hohenstaufens. The scene of the apparition was the portion of the Imperial Schloss known as the Arragon-Palast, which is occupied by the Prince of Arragon, titular King of Cantabria, and his family, when the Court is at Vindobona, and it is alleged that the ghost-seer, a sentinel on duty, is absolutely convinced of the reality of the sight, which is believed to portend an approaching death in the House of Hohenstaufen. The last recorded appearance of the Grey Lady in this portion of the Schloss took place prior to the death of the late King Paul of Cantabria, which occurred at an advanced age ten years ago. The king was connected with the Hohenstaufens through his mother, who was a Pannonian archduchess.”

CHAPTER V.
MANŒUVRES.

So confident was Usk in his mother’s kindness of heart that when Lord and Lady Caerleon arrived in London late that evening, he was waiting for them at the terminus, eager to conduct them at once to the Hotel Bloomsbury. Having seen the evening papers in the course of their journey, they were acquainted with the details of the tragedy, and did not need to be assured by him of the desolate state of the two girls.

“I knew you would come,” he said.

“How could we do anything else?” asked his mother. “Poor Félicia! one’s heart bleeds for her. Only just engaged, and her joy clouded in this terrible way——!”

“Oh, but—— we aren’t exactly engaged yet,” said Usk uncomfortably. “You see, Mr Steinherz had given his consent all right, but I hadn’t spoken to Félicia, and there has been no opportunity since.”

“No, of course not. But this makes it rather awkward, Usk. It seemed only natural to come and look after the poor girl when I thought she was engaged to you, but now she may consider it a liberty.”

“Not she, mater! She’ll think it just too sweet for words, as she and Miss Logan are always saying. They stand in tremendous awe of you.”

“There, Nadia!” said Lord Caerleon, “that settles it. You have somehow managed to inspire these unknown Americans with awe, and it’s your bounden duty to go and put things right—your duty, mind.”

“I will go and ask if I can do anything for them, certainly, as soon as we get there, but that’s different from having the right to go and mother them, as it were.”

“No; that’s just what they want,” said Usk. “Think of it, mater—two girls alone in a strange country in such terrible circumstances! Of course they want mothering.”

Lady Caerleon never allowed herself to shrink from a duty when it was once set plainly before her, and half an hour later she knocked at the door of the Steinherzes’ sitting-room. Maimie, who was sitting alone, worn out by innumerable harassing interviews with reporters, police inspectors, officials from the Pannonian and United States Embassies, and various tradesmen, thought wearily that here was another caller.

“Come right in,” she answered with resignation, but stood up astonished when she saw that the visitor was a stately and very handsome middle-aged lady. The surprise did not last more than a moment.

“You are the Marchioness of Caerleon,” she said, and again her tone spoke of hopeless resignation. “I sort of felt you would come.”

“My son told me of your sad trouble, and Lord Caerleon and I thought we might perhaps be some help to you,” said Lady Caerleon, almost timidly. She was trying to assure herself that Maimie’s words bespoke nothing but confidence, but she had an uncomfortable suspicion that they covered dislike, even defiance.

“Lord Usk is real considerate, but Miss Steinherz and I have no claim on the kindness of his relations,” said Maimie icily. Lady Caerleon mistook her meaning, and thought she had penetrated the secret of this cool reception.

“I assure you,” she said with a touch of hauteur, “I know perfectly well how things stand between Miss Steinherz and my son. She need have no fear that Usk will intrude himself and his wishes upon her at such a time. Pray believe that I have merely come to offer you such help as I can.”

“You are real good,” said Maimie, blushing as she realised what her words had implied to Usk’s mother; “but I’m so awfully tired to-night, I just can’t seem to say things right. I don’t know what way they fix anything over here, or what to say to the people that have been coming around all day.”

“My husband will undertake to see any one who comes on business, and he will advise you in any way he can,” said Lady Caerleon, touched by the confession. “I really think you will find it an advantage to have a man to represent you,” she added gently. “People here like it better.”

“And in England it’s just as well to have a lord back of one all the time?” Maimie spoke quite seriously, but it struck her at once that the words sounded like an ill-timed joke.

“I won’t ask to see Miss Steinherz to-night,” said Lady Caerleon, with some coldness; “but if she feels well enough in the morning——”

“If you please, miss,” said Félicia’s maid, entering the room, “Miss Steinherz have woke up all of a tremble, and she says will her ladyship go and see her for a moment, if she would be so kind?”

“I’ll just speak to her,” said Maimie quickly, and she hastened to Félicia’s room. “Fay,” she whispered hurriedly, “you won’t have Lady Caerleon see you to-night, will you? I didn’t want to bring her along till to-morrow, when I’ve got things fixed. I’ve planned it all out for us to go right back home at once, so’s you won’t have to come to any conclusion yet, and then in the spring we’ll cross to Europe just by ourselves and have an elegant time.”

“You make me tired—you and your plans and plots!” cried Félicia vehemently. “I’m so nervous I could fly, and I want to see somebody quiet and restful. That’s what I feel all the time with Usk. He’s not smart, but he’s real good. Just bring his mother right along in.”

Warned by the shrill voice and gleaming eyes, Maimie obeyed without a word, wondering maliciously what Lady Caerleon would think of the unconventional greeting she would probably receive. But Félicia made her way to her visitor’s heart at once. After one look at the calm beautiful face bent over her, she rose impulsively and threw herself into Lady Caerleon’s arms.

“Oh, love me!” she cried. “Pet me, just as if I was a baby again!”

“Oh, my darling!” cried Lady Caerleon, taken by storm. “Are you come to me instead of my Phil? I have lost her, you know; she was married last year, and I have wanted a daughter so much.”

She held the quivering form in her arms, stilled the sobs which broke forth, murmured tender names, until Félicia consented to lie down again, and then sat by her until she fell asleep, Maimie watching in the background, with bitter jealousy gnawing at her heart. She, who had mothered Félicia since she was nine and Félicia six, was nothing to her now that this Englishwoman had come on the scene. Then she remembered certain previous experiences of the kind, and was comforted. Félicia had turned from her before, in transient fits of virtue or of friendship, but she had always come back.

“She is the dearest girl!” Lady Caerleon said to her husband, with tears in her eyes, when she was at length free to seek her own room; “very unconventional—quite a child of nature, but my heart went out to her. It seemed as if she had always felt the want of a mother so terribly, and to-night, of course, worse than ever.”

During the days that followed, not only Félicia, but Maimie, learned to be thankful for the presence and countenance of Usk’s parents. The reporters had been inclined to invent scandalous stories on the strength of the supposed likeness between the murdered American millionaire and the Pannonian Archduke, but when Lord Caerleon, backed by the police and the hospital officials, assured them that the likeness was purely a delusion of the murderer’s, they were forced to restrain their exuberant fancy. As for Usk, he stood uneasily aloof when discussions of this kind were taking place, wondering at the blindness of the experts. With his mind’s eye he saw continually one of the chief treasures of Llandiarmid, a snuff-box presented to his great-grandfather when a young soldier by the aged Emperor Matthias of Pannonia, the great-grandfather alike of the present Emperor and of Mr Steinherz, in recognition of a gallant deed of arms done under his own eye. The monarch’s portrait, set in diamonds, ornamented the lid of the box, and it seemed almost incredible to Usk that his father could look at the face of the murdered man and not recall at once the miniature which was so familiar to him.

The Prince of the Captivity: The Epilogue to a Romance

THE PRINCE OFTHE CAPTIVITY

CONTENTS.