el almost like Sheynstone's Jessie."

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.

She smiled.

"Not what you thought I meant," she said gently. "Now, drive away,
please."

As they returned to the house, Mr. Wellington and his friend were
alighting from the touring car; Koltsoff was not with them. As soon as
he saw his daughter, Mr. Wellington, whose face was flushed, called
Anne to him.

"Say, Anne," he said, "is that Prince of yours a lunatic? Or what is
he?

"Why, no, father. Of course not. Why do you ask?"

"Well, then, if he is n't crazy he is a plain, ordinary, damned fool.
He was like a chicken with his head off all the afternoon, calling up
on the telephone, sending telegrams, and then, between pauses, telling
me he would have to leave right after the ball for Europe and wanting
us all to sail with him. Then, at the last minute, some whiskered
tramp came to the porch where we were sitting and the first thing I
knew he had excused himself for the evening and was going off up the
street with that hobo, both of them flapping their arms and exclaiming
in each other's faces like a couple of candidates for a padded cell.
Duke Ivan was a pill beside this man. And that is saying a whole lot,
let me tell you."

"Why, father!" exclaimed the girl. "I could cry! We are having that
dinner for him to-night, and--and oh--"

She rushed into the house and found her mother in her room.

"Mother," she said, "Prince Koltsoff has gone off again! He was with
father at the Reading Room and hurried away with a man, whom father
describes as a tramp, saying he must be excused for the evening."

"Very well," said Mrs. Wellington placidly; "we will have to have the
play--without Hamlet, nevertheless."

"But what shall I do?"

"You might ask McCall."

"Mother! Please! What can we do?"

"Frankly, I don't know, Anne," said Mrs. Wellington. "I confess that
this situation in all its ramifications has gone quite beyond me. It
is altogether annoying. But let me prophesy: Koltsoff will not miss
your dinner. He impresses me as a young man not altogether without
brains--although they are of a sort."

Mrs. Wellington was right. Koltsoff put in an appearance in time to
meet Anne's guests, but the Russian bear at the height of his moulting
season--or whatever disagreeable period he undergoes--is not more
impossible than was Prince Koltsoff that night.

CHAPTER XXII

THE BALL BEGINS

Mrs. Wellington's genius f