rewell," and he bowed and was gone.

When the curtain had swung to behind Olfan, Juanna sank back in her
chair and sighed, but Leonard sprang up and said:

"Juanna, that savage is right, you should have been a queen. I know what
it must have cost you to say what you did."

"Pray, to what do you refer, Leonard?" she said, interrupting him
coldly.

"I mean about our being married and the rest."

"Oh! yes. Well, you see it is sometimes necessary to tell white lies,
and I think that after to-night I am entitled to a prize for general
proficiency in this respect. Of course," she added, dropping her
sarcastic tone, "you will not misinterpret anything that I was forced
to say to Olfan with reference to yourself, because you know that those
statements were the biggest fibs of all. Just then, had it been needful,
I should have been prepared to swear that I was married to Otter and
deeply attached to him, or even to the king himself, who, by the
way, strikes me as the most satisfactory savage that I have ever come
across--in short, as a gentleman."

Leonard turned pale with anger.

"Really, Juanna," he said, "I think that you might wait until I seek to
take some advantage of our friendship and accidental relations before
you rebuke me as you think fit to do. It is little short of an insult,
and were we in any civilised country I would never speak to you again."

"Don't get angry, Leonard," she said appealingly, for Juanna seemed to
have every mood at her command and ready to be assumed at a moment's
notice. Perhaps this gift was one of the secrets of her charm, since
monotony is a thing to be avoided by women who seek to rule, even the
monotony of sweetness. "It is very unkind of you," she went on, "to
speak crossly to me when I am so tired with talking to that savage and
we may all be dead and buried in a few hours," and she looked as though
she were going to cry.

Leonard collapsed instantly, for Juanna's plaintive mood was the one
that he could resist the least of any.

"You would make me angry if I were on my death-bed," he said, "that is,
when you talk like that. But there it is, I cannot change you, so let
us change the subject. Have you any of that poison to spare? If so, you
might serve us out a little; we may want it before the evening is over."

Juanna put her hand to her hair and after some manipulation produced a
tiny skin bag, from which she extracted a brown ball of about the size
of a rifle bullet.