he warned him, smiling into his face.

But just then the door of the room was unceremoniously opened.

'Go right in,' said a voice sharply. It was Theodore Racksole's. Two
men entered, bearing a prone form on a stretcher, and Racksole followed
them.

Nella sprang up. Racksole stared to see his daughter.

'I didn't know you were in here, Nell. Here,' to the two men, 'out
again.'

'Why!' exclaimed Nella, gazing fearfully at the form on the stretcher,
'it's Mr Dimmock!'

'It is,' her father acquiesced. 'He's dead,' he added laconically. 'I'd
have broken it to you more gently had I known. Your pardon, Prince.'
There was a pause.

'Dimmock dead!' Prince Aribert whispered under his breath, and he
kneeled down by the side of the stretcher. 'What does this mean?'

The poor fellow was just walking across the quadrangle towards the
portico when he fell down. A commissionaire who saw him says he was
walking very quickly. At first I thought it was sunstroke, but it
couldn't have been, though the weather certainly is rather warm. It must
be heart disease. But anyhow, he's dead. We did what we could. I've
sent for a doctor, and for the police. I suppose there'll have to be an
inquest.'

Theodore Racksole stopped, and in an awkward solemn silence they all
gazed at the dead youth. His features were slightly drawn, and his eyes
closed; that was all. He might have been asleep.

'My poor Dimmock!' exclaimed the Prince, his voice broken. 'And I was
angry because the lad did not meet me at Charing Cross!'

'Are you sure he is dead, Father?' Nella said.

'You'd better go away, Nella,' was Racksole's only reply; but the girl
stood still, and began to sob quietly. On the previous night she had
secretly made fun of Reginald Dimmock. She had deliberately set herself
to get information from him on a topic in which she happened to be
specially interested and she had got it, laughing the while at his
youthful crudities--his vanity, his transparent cunning, his absurd
airs. She had not liked him; she had even distrusted him, and decided
that he was not 'nice'. But now, as he lay on the stretcher, these
things were forgotten. She went so far as to reproach herself for them.
Such is the strange commanding power of death.

'Oblige me by taking the poor fellow to my apartments,' said the Prince,
with a gesture to the attendants. 'Surely it is time the doctor came.'

Racksole felt suddenly at that moment he was nothing but a mere hotel