otel!' exclaimed the Prince.

'That's so,' said Racksole.

'And Felix Babylon has gone?'

'He is going, if he has not already gone.'

'Ah! I see,' said the Prince; 'this is one of your American "strokes".
You have bought to sell again, is that not it? You are on your holidays,
but you cannot resist making a few thousands by way of relaxation. I
have heard of such things.'

'We sha'n't sell again, Prince, until we are tired of our bargain.
Sometimes we tire very quickly, and sometimes we don't. It depends--eh?
What?'

Racksole broke off suddenly to attend to a servant in livery who had
quietly entered the bureau and was making urgent mysterious signs to
him.

'If you please, sir,' the man by frantic gestures implored Mr Theodore
Racksole to come out.

'Pray don't let me detain you, Mr Racksole,' said the Prince, and
therefore the proprietor of the Grand Babylon departed after the
servant, with a queer, curt little bow to Prince Aribert.

'Mayn't I come inside?' said the Prince to Nella immediately the
millionaire had gone.

'Impossible, Prince,' Nella laughed. 'The rule against visitors entering
this bureau is frightfully strict.'

'How do you know the rule is so strict if you only came into possession
last night?'

'I know because I made the rule myself this morning, your Highness.'

'But seriously, Miss Racksole, I want to talk to you.'

'Do you want to talk to me as Prince Aribert or as the friend--the
acquaintance--whom I knew in Paris' last year?'

'As the friend, dear lady, if I may use the term.'

'And you are sure that you would not like first to be conducted to your
apartments?'

'Not yet. I will wait till Dimmock comes; he cannot fail to be here
soon.'

'Then we will have tea served in father's private room--the proprietor's
private room, you know.'

'Good!' he said.

Nella talked through a telephone, and rang several bells, and behaved
generally in a manner calculated to prove to Princes and to whomever
it might concern that she was a young woman of business instincts and
training, and then she stepped down from her chair of office, emerged
from the bureau, and, preceded by two menials, led Prince Aribert to
the Louis XV chamber in which her father and Felix Babylon had had their
long confabulation on the previous evening.

'What do you want to talk to me about?' she asked her companion, as she
poured out for him a second cup of tea. The Prince looked at her for
a moment as he too