ort time
before. Then he heard nothing more. He gazed around him as he sat with
his hands tightly closed. Had it been only a dream? Naughty whined;
Sardanapolis edged toward him and mechanically he began to brush him
down until he shone as sleek and shining as his Assyrian namesake.

CHAPTER V

A CONTRETEMPS

More days passed and Mr. Heatherbloom continued to linger in his last
position. It promised to be a record-making situation from the
standpoint of longevity; he had never "lasted" at any one task so long
before. Miss Van Rolsen, to his consternation, seemed to unbend somewhat
before him, as if she were beginning--actually!--to be more prepossessed
in his favor. These evidences that he was rising in the stern lady's
good graces filled Mr. Heatherbloom with new dismay; destiny certainly
seemed to be making a mock of him.

A week went by; two weeks--three, and still twice a day he continued to
march to and from the park with his charges. The faces of all the
nurse-maids and others who frequented the big parallelogram of green
became familiar to him; he learned to know by sight the people who rode
in the park and had a distant acquaintance with the squirrels.

He became, for the first time, aware one day, from the perusal of a
certain newspaper he always purchased now, that the prince had returned
to Russia. Although Miss Dalrymple refused to be interviewed, or to
confirm or deny any statement, it was generally understood (convenient
phrase!) that the wedding would take place in the fall at the old Van
Rolsen home. The prince had left America in his yacht--the _Nevski_--for
St. Petersburg, announced the society editor. After a special interview
with the czar and a few necessary business arrangements, the nobleman
would return at once for his bride. And, perhaps, he--Mr.
Heatherbloom--would still be at his post of duty at the Van Rolsen
house!

Since the day the prince had been with Miss Dalrymple in the
conservatory, Mr. Heatherbloom had not seen, or rather heard, that
gentleman at the house. But then he--Mr. Heatherbloom--belonged in the
rear, and, no doubt, the prince had continued to be a daily, or twice,
or three-times-a-day visitor to Miss Van Rolsen's elegant, if somewhat
stiff, reception rooms. Now, however, he would come no more until he
came finally to "take with him the bride--"

The thought was in Horatio's mind when for a third time he encountered
her, face to face, on a landing, near a sta