ng," she said formally.

"I will leave a dose with her maid," I replied, "so that if it be
necessary it may be given in the night."

"You will, of course, be in attendance if required," she said coldly.

I bowed.

"I am paid for it, madam," I answered, though I must confess to a
hostile feeling within my heart.

"I think, then, that is all," she said, and I took my dismissal at the
hands of the arrogant beauty with an internal conflict of anger and
admiration.

I did not return to Pye, but went to my own cabin in an irritable
condition. It ought not to have mattered to me that the sister of a
millionaire, my employer, should treat me more or less as a lackey; but
it did. I threw myself on my bunk and took down a book at random from
my little shelf. Out of its pages tumbled an evening news-sheet which I
now remembered to have bought of a screaming boy as I hurried into the
dock gates on the previous afternoon. I had not had time to look at it
in my various preoccupations, but, after all, it was the last news of
my native land I should have for some time, and so I opened it and
began the perusal.

It was one of those half-penny journals which seem to combine the
maximum of vulgarity with a minimum of news. But I passed over the
blatant racing items and murder trials with less than my customary
distaste, and was rambling leisurely through the columns when I was
arrested by a paragraph and sat up briskly. It was the tail that
interested me.

"... It is stated that Prince Frederic is in London. The name of the
lady who has so infatuated him is Mlle. Yvonne Trebizond, the
well-known prima donna."

I had recalled the name Trebizond during Holgate's talk, and it seemed
strange now that this second discovery should fall so coincidently. The
face of Mlle. Chateray had taken me back, by a sudden gust of memory,
to certain pleasant days in Paris before I was banished to the East
End. I had frequented the theatres and the concert-rooms, and I
remembered the vivacious singer, a true _comedienne_, with her pack of
tricks and her remarkable individuality. Mlle. Chateray, then, was no
other than Yvonne Trebizond, and----

I looked down at the paper and read another sentence, which, ere that
illumination, had had no significance, but now was pregnant with it.

"The prince has the full support and sympathy of his sister, Princess
Alix."

I rose abruptly. I can keep my own counsel as well as a lawyer's clerk,
but I saw no