akfast in
the buffet of the station. The restaurant was thronged with numerous
passengers, most of whom seemed hardly yet awake, while many were
unkempt and dishevelled, as if they had had little sleep during the
night.

Jennie found a small table and sat down beside it, ordering her coffee
and rolls from the waiter who came to serve her. Looking round at the
cosmopolitan company, and listening to the many languages, whose clash
gave a Babel air to the restaurant, Jennie fell to musing on the strange
experiences she had encountered since leaving London. It seemed to her
she had been taking part in some ghastly nightmare, and she shuddered as
she thought of the lawlessness, under cover of law, of this great and
despotic empire, where even the ruler was under the surveillance of his
subordinates, and could not get a letter out of his own dominion in
safety, were he so minded. In her day-dream she became conscious,
without noting its application to herself, that a man was standing
before her table; then a voice which made her heart stop said,--

"Ah, lost Princess!"

She placed her hand suddenly to her throat, for the catch in her
breath seemed to be suffocating her, then looked up and saw Lord Donal
Stirling, in the ordinary everyday dress of an English gentleman, as
well groomed as if he had come, not from a train, but from his own
house. There was a kindly smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes,
but his face was of ghastly pallor.

"Oh, Lord Donal!" she cried, regarding him with eyes of wonder and fear,
"what is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," the young man replied, with an attempt at a laugh; "nothing,
now that I have found you, Princess. I have been making a night of it,
that's all, and am suffering the consequences in the morning. May I sit
down?"

He dropped into a chair on the other side of the table, like a man
thoroughly exhausted, unable to stand longer, and went on,--

"Like all dissipated men, I am going to break my fast on stimulants.
Waiter," he said, "bring me a large glass of your best brandy."

"And, waiter," interjected Jennie in French, "bring two breakfasts. I
suppose it was not a meal that you ordered just now, Lord Donal?"

"I have ordered my breakfast," he said; "still, it pleads in my favour
that I do not carry brandy with me, as I ought to do, and so must drink
the vile stuff they call their best here."

"You should eat as well," she insisted, taking charge of him as if she
had ever