ppose I am a fool, but all the
time I am fancying things."

Forrest moved away with a little laugh, and the Princess rose and
thrust her arm through Cecil's.

"Silly boy!" she said. "You have nothing to be frightened about, I can
assure you."

"I am not frightened," Cecil answered. "I don't think that I was ever a
coward. All the same, there are some things about this fellow which I
don't quite understand."

The Princess laughed as she swept from the room.

"Don't be foolish, Cecil," she said. "Remember that we are all here,
and that nothing can go wrong unless we lose our nerve."

Forrest found the Princess alone a little later in the evening, waiting
in the hall for the dinner-gong. He drew her into a corner, under
pretext of showing her one of the old engravings, dark with age, which
hung upon the wall.

"Ena," he said, "I suppose that you trust Cecil de la Borne? You
haven't any fear about him, eh?"

The Princess shrugged her shoulders.

"No!" she answered. "He is a coward at heart, but he has enough vanity,
I believe, to keep him from doing anything foolish. All the same, I
think it is wiser not to leave him alone here."

"He would not stay," Forrest remarked. "He told me so only this
morning."

"You suggested leaving?" the Princess asked.

Forrest nodded.

"I couldn't help it," he said, a little sullenly. "There is something
about these great empty rooms, and the silence of the place, that's
getting on my nerves. I start every time that great front-door bell
clangs, or I hear an unfamiliar footstep in the hall. God! What fools
we have been," he added, with a sudden bitter strength. "I couldn't
have believed that I could ever have done anything so clumsy. Fancy
giving ourselves away to a fool like Engleton, a self-opinionated young
cub scarcely out of his cradle."

He felt his damp forehead. The Princess was watching him curiously.

"Don't be a fool, Nigel," she said. "We underrated Engleton, that was
all. If ever a man looked an idiot, he did, and you must remember that
we were in a corner. Yet," she added, leaning a little forward in her
chair and gazing with hard, set face into the fire, "it was foolish of
me. With Jeanne to play with, I ought to have had no such difficulties.
I never counted upon the tradespeople being so unreasonable. If they
had let me finish the season it would have been all right."

Forrest walked restlessly across the room, and stood for a moment
looking out of the wi