life?"

In the brief interval following this naïve assertion, his guests
were not unnaturally speechless. Miss Holland, bending slightly
forward, looked at the prince breathlessly.

"I have suffered," he went on, "I have suffered indescribably since
that terrible morning when I missed her and understood her mission.
I followed quickly--I was without when you entered, but I came too
late. Since then I have waited, unwilling to go to you, certain that
the gods would permit the possible. And now--what shall I say?"

He hesitated, his eyes meeting Miss Holland's. And in that moment
Mrs. Hastings found her voice. She curved the chain of her
eye-glasses over her ear, threw back her head until the
tortoise-rims included her host, and spoke her mind.

"Well, Prince Tabnit," she said sharply--quite as if, St. George
thought, she had been nursery governess to princes all her life--"I
must say that I think your regret comes somewhat late in the day.
It's all very well to suffer as you say over what your servant has
tried to do. But what kind of man must you be to have such a
servant, in the first place? Didn't you know that she was dangerous
and blood-thirsty, and very likely a maniac-born?"

Her voice, never modulated in her excitements, was so full that no
one heard at that instant a quick, indrawn breath from St. George,
having something of triumph and something of terror. Even as he
listened he had been running swiftly over the objects in the room to
fasten every one in his memory, and his eyes had rested upon the