demanded the Prince,
with some indignation.

"There was no need, Your Highness," responded Tellier, easily. "In the
first place, she was, of course, in no real danger. In the second place,
I perceived instantly that fate was playing into my hands. In fact, the
incident could not have been more a propos if it had been arranged by my
guardian angel. For from the chair beside which I was stationed a man
sprang out and kicked the dog away. Your Highness must have remarked his
agility and strength--may even have seen his face."

"No," said the Prince. "I was not near enough to see it distinctly."

"I saw it, Your Highness, very distinctly, and I assure you that it was
that of a man in the full enjoyment of health. Even from his agility,
Your Highness could doubtless judge whether the man was seriously ill."

The Prince hitched about in his chair a little impatiently. He was
beginning to find the Frenchman tedious.

"Most certainly he was not seriously ill," he agreed; "nor, I should
say, even slightly so. What is that to me? Pray have done with this
mystery!"

Tellier's face was glowing with all a Frenchman's pride in a coup de
theatre--his moment of triumph had arrived.

"Of all the eyes which witnessed that episode, seemingly so slight and
so unimportant," he said, proudly, "mine were the only ones which saw
its full significance. Your Highness will, no doubt, be surprised when I
inform you that this gentleman, so agile and so athletic, was no other
than Lord Vernon!"

CHAPTER VI

The Path Grows Crooked

In the sitting-room of apartment A, in the south wing of the Grand Hotel
Royal, Lord Vernon was tramping nervously up and down while his
companions regarded him with evident anxiety.

"I tell you fellows," he was saying, "it can't be kept up--I thought so
from the first, but all the rest of you seemed to think it would be so
infernally easy that I was ashamed to say anything. I knew something was
sure to happen to give us away, and something has happened. What was I
to do? Sit there like a mummy and allow that dog to frighten those girls
to death? What the deuce are you laughing at, Collins?"

"I'm laughing at your tragic tone. No, you couldn't have sat
still--though I don't suppose the young ladies were in any serious
danger. They were pretty, no doubt?"

"Ah!" said Vernon, with a mental smacking of the lips at the entrancing
picture the words called up.

"That, of course, made it doubly impossi