e royal fortune--until George
or his heir came back to reign as King of England.

For twenty years Mr. Bugbee had been in possession, or rather dominion.
The poverty of the royal exile in America was well known to him; but to
the demands and petitions of George and his "Court" he turned a deaf
ear. His conscience, he answered, would not allow him to touch one penny
of the treasure, which could only be legally drawn by a reigning King of
England.

In the early years of the King's exile, Bugbee had sent considerable
sums to his royal master, which he alleged were from his own purse; but
though he had since continued these, the annual amount had been reduced
to a beggarly allowance.

Still the old banker was the most trusted agent of the Royalists; and
weak George himself regarded with a vague respect, almost like fear, the
inflexible integrity which controlled the conscience of this most
devoted subject.

Mrs. Oswald Carey did not hear the city clocks, which "clashed and
hammered" the midnight hour, as her cab rolled up the tree-lined avenue
of the pretentious house of "The King's Banker."

The driver rang the bell; and as the door almost instantly opened, Mrs.
Carey, from the cab, saw several men in the wide hall, some sitting and
others standing, like men in waiting.

A tall flunkey took the card, closed the door, and Mrs. Oswald Carey had
to wait in the cab a full minute. Then the door opened, and down the
wide steps of the porch hobbled Mr. Bugbee, with gouty, tender feet, the
top of his bald head shining under the lamp.

"I had almost given you up," was his greeting; and as he helped the
Beauty from the cab there was an unquestionable welcome in his gratified
smile. That they had met before, and intimately, was evident in the
manner of the reception. The truth was that Mrs. Oswald Carey and her
husband were old connections of the banker, the husband through monetary
difficulties and the wife through complications of her own, in which old
Bugbee had, for some reason or other, assisted her more than once. She
knew that her husband was in the old man's power, but she never
pretended to know it. On his side, old Bugbee was a foresighted worker.
For years past he had seen that the day of the King's return would come,
and for that day he meant to be prepared in more ways than one. In his
cunning old brain he had some plan laid away in which he had provided a
part for this beautiful and utterly unprincipled woman.