don't expect me to connive at the
abduction of my own daughter. I have a certain amount of reputation to
lose, you know."

"Oh, if His Highness is the clever villain that we know him to be, I
think we may safely trust him to arrange for your temporary
disappearance from the scene. And whatever he does it will be easy for
you to play the part of the passive victim for the time being. He can't
injure or kill you, for if it came to extremities you have the means of
giving his people such a fright as would probably drive them out of
their senses, just as I could if their master got troublesome. Really,
from a certain point of view, the adventure will have a decidedly
humorous aspect."

"With a very considerable leaven of tragedy."

"Yes, the tragedy will be a logical sequence of the comedy--and, as I
said last night, it will be tragedy. And now suppose we go to breakfast.
I have been up nearly two hours helping Jenny with the packing, and this
lovely air has given me a raging appetite. There's a little more to do
yet, and we shall have His Highness here before long to ask for our
decision and take us off to the yacht."

Here she was quite right, for she had hardly left her father to his
after-breakfast pipe and gone upstairs to help her maid, than
Oscarovitch came into the smoking-room.

"Good morning, Professor Marmion! I need not ask you if you have had a
good night. You look the very picture of a man who has slept the sleep
of the just. And Miss Marmion?"

"Thanks, Your Highness, I think we have both managed to spend the night
to good purpose. The air here is glorious just now. I always think that
sound, dreamless sleep is the best sign that a place is doing you good."

"Oh, undoubtedly, though for some reason or other I did not sleep very
well last night. Something had disagreed with me, I suppose. I seemed to
have a sense of being pursued to the uttermost ends of the earth and
back again by some relentless foe who simply would not allow me to take
a moment's rest. But I didn't come to talk about the stuff that dreams
are made of. I came to ask whether my cruise is to be a lonely one, or
whether I am to have the very great pleasure of your company."

Franklin Marmion, for perhaps the first time in his life, felt
distinctly murderous towards a fellow-creature as he looked at this
splendid specimen of physical humanity, knowing so well the real man who
was hiding behind that fascinating exterior; but he managed