colorless. This
gave a darker hue to the thin mustache and the trim imperial, through
which she caught a glint of white teeth, in what seemed half a smile
and half a snarl. The hair was parted almost in the centre, a little
to the right, and but for the pebbled shadows about the sunken, yet
still bright eyes, he would be called a youthful-looking man. She
understood why women would always speak of him as a handsome man.

"I am sorry, but I was compelled to force the bolt," he said, slowly,
with his enigmatic smile.

She still looked at him in silence, from under lowered brows. Her
fingers were locking and unlocking nervously.

"And to what do I owe this visit?" he demanded mockingly. He was quite
close to her by this time.

She took a step backward. She could even smell brandy on his breath.

"Your English is admirable!" she answered, as mockingly.

"As your energy!" he retorted, taking a step nearer the still open
door. Then he looked about the room, slowly and comprehensively. On
his face, in the strong sidelight, she could see mirrored each fresh
discovery, as step by step he covered the course of the completed
invasion. She followed his gaze, which now rested on the rifled safe.

A little oath, in Russian, suddenly escaped his lips.

Then he turned and strode into the anteroom, and she could hear him
making fast and locking the outer hall door. Then he withdrew the key,
and came back to her.

"I must still regard you, of course, as my guest," he said slowly, with
his easy menace.

"You Europeans always give us lessons in the older virtues!" she
retorted, as mockingly as before, in her soft contralto.

He looked at her, for a moment, in puzzled wonder. Then he held the
lamp closer to her face. He nursed no illusions about women. Frances
Durkin knew that for years now he had made them his tools and his
accomplices, never his dictators and masters. But as he looked into
the pale face, with the shadowy, almost luminous violet eyes, and the
soft droop of the full red lips, and the still girlish tenderness of
line about the brow and chin, and then at the betraying fulness of
throat and bosom, the mockery died out of his smile.

It was supplanted by a look more ominously purposeful, more grimly
determined.

"What, madam, did you come here for?" he demanded.

She shrugged an apparently careless shoulder.

"His Highness, the Prince Ignace Slevenski Pobloff, has always been the
recipient of mu