knew you to do anything quite so _bourgeois_ before."
There was a gleam of mischief in her eyes. "Sleeping in a public
place! You weren't sleeping, were you?"

"No, I was not," said her mother. "I have been thinking, planning."

"Oh, Prince Koltsoff!"

"Yes." Mrs. Wellington raised her hand languidly to her face. "He
wrote he was coming to us this afternoon, direct from the Russian
ambassador's at Bar Harbor. Did he not?"

"Yes, unless Miss Hatch was mistaken in what she said the other day."

"Miss Hatch," said the elder woman, "is one of the few secretaries I
ever had who does not make mistakes. However, that is neither here nor
there. Prince Koltsoff has been in Newport for a week."

"A week! The idea! Where? Not with the Van Antwerps?" Miss
Wellington's eyes blazed with interest.

"No, not with any one that I was able to discover. But Clarie
Pembroke, of the British legation, was driving from the Reading Room to
the yacht club with your father the other day. He told me he was
certain he saw Koltsoff standing on a side street near the Aquidneck."

"Why on earth did n't you tell me before?" cried the daughter. "What a
delightful mystery!" She smiled with mischief. "Do you suppose after
all he is some no-account? You know Russian princes are as numerous as
Russian bears; they can be as great bounders and as indigent as Italian
counts--"

"All of which you have heard me say quite frequently," interrupted Mrs.
Wellington placidly. "Koltsoff is not pinchbeck. The Koltsoffs are an
illustrious Russian family, and have been for years. I think I know my
Almanach de Gotha. Why, Koltsoff is _aide-de-camp_ to the Czar and
has, I believe, estates in southern Russia. His father fought
brilliantly in the Russo-Turkish War and gained the Cross of St. Anne;
his great, or great-great-grandfather, I don't recall which, was a
general of note of Catherine the Great's, and if certain intimate
histories of that time are not wholly false, her rewards for his
services were scandalously bestowed."

"No doubt," said the girl carelessly. "And Koltsoff?"

"A genuinely distinguished fellow. He was educated, of course, at the
cadet school in St. Petersburg and during the Japanese War was with the
Czar. I met him in London, last May, at Lord McEncroe's, as I have
already told you, I think, and when he spoke of coming to America this
summer I engaged him for August."

"It was rather farsighted of you," said th