am greatly relieved."

"Louis of Messina," he began more gently, "is the most
unscrupulous rascal in Europe. Since they turned him out of
his kingdom he has lived by selling his title to men who are
promoting new brands of champagne or floating queer mining
shares. The greater part of his income is dependent on the
generosity of the old nobility of Messina, and when they don't
pay him readily enough, he levies blackmail on them. He owes
money to every tailor and horse-dealer and hotel-keeper in
Europe, and no one who can tell one card from another will
play with him. That is his reputation. And to help him live
up to it he has surrounded himself with a parcel of
adventurers as rascally as himself: a Colonel Erhaupt who was
dropped from a German regiment, and who is a Colonel only by
the favor of the Queen of Madagascar; a retired croupier named
Barrat; and a fallen angel called Kalonay, a fellow of the
very best blood in Europe and with the very worst morals.
They call him the King's jackal, and he is one of the most
delightful blackguards I ever met. So is the King for that
matter, a most entertaining individual if you keep him in his
place, but a man no woman can know. In fact, Mrs. Carson,"
Gordon went on, addressing himself to the mother, "when you
have to say that a woman has absolutely no reputation whatever
you can best express it by explaining that she has a title
from Louis of Messina. That is his Majesty's way of treating
his feminine friends when they bore him and he wants to get
rid of them. He gives them a title.

"The only thing the man ever did that was to his credit and