y established a
precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "_I_ can never run away
with a woman now--never."

Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk
it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing.
She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the
meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise
among the incoherences that she called him friend!

As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and
sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more
ventured to speak.

"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to
plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I
was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty. But
when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform----"

She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed
incredulously.

Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on
mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling
experiences.

"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to
attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would
have been stopped by your husband himself. As it is you are simply
going where you are expected to go--to Westboro' Castle."

This denouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no
place for ecstatics. She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated,
dazed:--

"The _King_! The King had followed me! He had been warned then, but
by whom? You above all did not....?"

"Oh no!" He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this
disloyalty. "I had nothing to do with it. The King had come on with
the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is
indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's."

And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him
say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven."

She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you
play with me?" The tears started to her eyes.

"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession--"has
plainly betrayed you. Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else
he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your
husband--at all events, both he and the King took the slow train."

"But _you_," she interrupted, staring at him--"You a