ound it
for me."

"Oh, he did, did he?" said Clay; "that's why I couldn't find it. I am
hungry," he laughed, "my ride gave me an appetite." He looked over and
grinned at Stuart, but that gentleman was staring fixedly at the
candles on the table before him, his eyes filled with concern. Clay
observed that Madame Alvarez was covertly watching the young officer,
and frowning her disapproval at his preoccupation. So he stretched his
leg under the table and kicked viciously at Stuart's boots. Old
General Rojas, the Vice-President, who sat next to Stuart, moved
suddenly and then blinked violently at the ceiling with an expression
of patient suffering, but the exclamation which had escaped him brought
Stuart back to the present, and he talked with the woman next him in a
perfunctory manner.

Miss Langham and her father were waiting for their carriage in the
great hall of the Palace as Stuart came up to Clay, and putting his
hand affectionately on his shoulder, began pointing to something
farther back in the hall. To the night-birds of the streets and the
noisy fiacre drivers outside, and to the crowd of guests who stood on
the high marble steps waiting for their turn to depart, he might have
been relating an amusing anecdote of the ball just over.

"I'm in great trouble, old man," was what he said. "I must see you
alone to-night. I'd ask you to my rooms, but they watch me all the
time, and I don't want them to suspect you are in this until they must.
Go on in the carriage, but get out as you pass the Plaza Bolivar and
wait for me by the statue there."

Clay smiled, apparently in great amusement. "That's very good," he
said.

He crossed over to where King stood surveying the powdered beauties of
Olancho and their gowns of a past fashion, with an intensity of
admiration which would have been suspicious to those who knew his
tastes. "When we get into the carriage," said Clay, in a low voice,
"we will both call to Stuart that we will see him to-morrow morning at
breakfast."

"All right," assented King. "What's up?"

Stuart helped Miss Langham into her carriage, and as it moved away King
shouted to him in English to remember that he was breakfasting with him
on the morrow, and Clay called out in Spanish, "Until to-morrow at
breakfast, don't forget." And Stuart answered, steadily, "Good night
until to-morrow at one."

As their carriage jolted through the dark and narrow street, empty now
of all noise or moveme