trate, but suddenly caught
the undercurrent of the naive remark.

"By Jove," he said, his eyes glowing, "you must not risk finding me too
obtuse."

"Bravo!" she cried. "You are improving."

"I could provide a splendid substitute for the friendship you speak of,"
he said coolly.

"Poof! What is that to me? I could have a hundred lovers--but, ach,
friends are the scarcest things in the world. I prefer friendship. It
lasts. There! I see disapproval in your face! You Americans are so
literal." She gazed into the fireplace for a moment, her lips parted in
a whimsical smile. He waited for her to go on; the words were on her
tongue's end, he could tell. "A divorce at twenty-five. I believe that
is the accepted age, isn't it? If one gets beyond that, she--but, enough
of this!" She sprang to her feet and stood before him, the flash dying
in her eyes even as it was born that he might see so briefly. "We
diverge! You must go soon. It is best not to be seen leaving here at a
very late hour--especially as my father is known to be away. I am afraid
of Peter Brutus. He is here to watch--_everybody_."

She was leaning against the great carved mantel post, a tall, slender,
lissome creature, exquisitely gowned in rarest Irish lace, her bare neck
and shoulders gleaming white against the dull timbers beyond, the faint
glow from the embers creeping up to her face with the insistence of a
maiden's flush. He gazed in rapt admiration, his heart thumping like
fury in his great breast. She was little more than a girl, this wife of
old Marlanx, and yet how wise, how clever, how brilliant she was!

A face of unusual pallor and extremely patrician in its modelling,
surmounted by a coiffure so black that it could be compared only to
ebony--black and almost gleaming with the life that was in it. It came
low on her forehead, shading the wondrous dark eyes--eyes that were a
deep yellowish green in their division between grey and black, eyes that
were soft and luminous and unwaveringly steadfast, impelling in their
power to fascinate, yet even more dangerously compassionate when put to
the test that tries woman's vanity.

There were diamonds on her long, tapering fingers, and a rope of pearls
in her hair. A single wide gold band encircled her arm above the elbow,
an arm-band as old as the principality itself, for it had been worn by
twenty fair ancestors before her. The noblewomen of Graustark never wore
bracelets on their wrists; always the wid