hing?"

The Princess rested her head slightly upon the long slender fingers of
her right hand. Bond Street had taken care of her complexion, but the
veins in her hand were blue, and art had no means of concealing a
certain sharpness of features and the thin lines about the eyes,
nameless suggestions of middle age. Yet she was still a handsome woman.
She knew how to dress, and how to make the best of herself. She had the
foreigner's instinct for clothes, and her figure was still
irreproachable. She sat and looked with a sort of calculating interest
at the man who for years had come as near touching her heart as any of
his sex. Curiously enough she knew that this new aspect in which he now
presented himself, this incipient cowardice--the first-fruits of
weakening nerves--did not and could not affect her feelings for him.
She saw him now almost for the first time with the mask dropped, no
longer cold, cynical and calculating, but a man moved to his shallow
depths by what might well seem to him, a dweller in the narrow ways of
life, as a tragedy. It looked at her out of his grey eyes. It showed
itself in the twitching of his lips. For many years he had lived upon a
little less than nothing a year. Now for the first time his means of
livelihood were threatened. His long-suffering acquaintances had left
him alone at the card-table.

"You disappoint me, Nigel," she said. "I hate to see a man weaken.
There is nothing against you. Don't act as though there could be. As to
this little house-party you were speaking of, I only wish I could think
of something to help you. By the by, what are you doing to-night?"

"Nothing," he answered, "except that Engleton is expecting me to dine
with him."

"I have an idea," the Princess said slowly. "It may not come to
anything, but it is worth trying. Have you met my new admirer, Mr.
Cecil de la Borne?"

Forrest shook his head.

"Do you mean a dandified-looking boy whom you were driving with in the
Park yesterday?"

The Princess nodded.

"We met him a week or so ago," she answered, "and he has been very
attentive. He has a country place down in Norfolk, which from his
description is, I should think, like a castle in Hermitland. Jeanne and
I are dining with him to-night at the Savoy. You and Engleton must
come, too. I can arrange it. It is just possible that we may be able to
manage something. He told me yesterday that he was going back to
Norfolk very soon. I fancy that he has a brot