can hesitate no longer. I must
myself go to the Emperor and acquaint him with the facts.'

'I suppose you've just got to keep straight with him?' Nella was on the
point of saying, but she checked herself and substituted, 'The Emperor
is your chief, is he not? "First among equals", you call him.'

'His Majesty is our over-lord,' said Aribert quietly.

'Why do you not take immediate steps to inquire as to the whereabouts of
your Royal nephew?' she asked simply. The affair seemed to her just then
so plain and straightforward.

'Because one of two things may have happened. Either Eugen may have
been, in plain language, abducted, or he may have had his own reasons
for changing his programme and keeping in the background--out of reach
of telegraph and post and railways.'

'What sort of reasons?'

'Do not ask me. In the history of every family there are passages--' He
stopped.

'And what was Prince Eugen's object in coming to London?'

Aribert hesitated.

'Money,' he said at length. 'As a family we are very poor--poorer than
anyone in Berlin suspects.'

'Prince Aribert,' Nella said, 'shall I tell you what I think?' She
leaned back in her chair, and looked at him out of half-closed eyes. His
pale, thin, distinguished face held her gaze as if by some fascination.
There could be no mistaking this man for anything else but a Prince.

'If you will,' he said.

'Prince Eugen is the victim of a plot.'

'You think so?'

'I am perfectly convinced of it.'

'But why? What can be the object of a plot against him?'

'That is a point of which you should know more than me,' she remarked
drily.

'Ah! Perhaps, perhaps,' he said. 'But, dear Miss Racksole, why are you
so sure?'

'There are several reasons, and they are connected with Mr Dimmock.
Did you ever suspect, your Highness, that that poor young man was not
entirely loyal to you?'

'He was absolutely loyal,' said the Prince, with all the earnestness of
conviction.

'A thousand pardons, but he was not.'

'Miss Racksole, if any other than yourself made that assertion, I
would--I would--'

'Consign them to the deepest dungeon in Posen?' she laughed, lightly.

'Listen.' And she told him of the incidents which had occurred in the
night preceding his arrival in the hotel.

'Do you mean, Miss Racksole, that there was an understanding between
poor Dimmock and this fellow Jules?'

'There was an understanding.'

'Impossible!'

'Your Highness, the man who wishes