which, and that not the real and natural one, was hers.

Had she felt that she had the disposal of herself in her own hands,
she would not, perhaps, have waited with such painful apprehension
the avowal which hour after hour, now that they were brought into
such close and constant relationships on board this little vessel
high in mid-air, she saw trembling on the lips of her rescuer.

Arnold's life of hard, honest work, and his constant habit of facing
truth in its most uncompromising forms, had made dissimulation almost
impossible to him; and added to that, situated as he was, there was
no necessity for it. Colston knew of his love, and the Princess had
guessed it long ago. Did Natasha know his open secret? Of that he
hardly dared to be sure, though something told him that the
inevitable moment of knowledge was near at hand.

For the first twenty-four hours of the voyage he had seen very little
of either her or the Princess, as they had mostly remained in their
cabins, enjoying a complete rest after the terrible fatigue and
suffering they had gone through since their capture in Moscow, but on
the Thursday morning they had had breakfast in the saloon with him
and Colston, and had afterwards spent a portion of the morning on
deck, deeply interested in watching the fight between the British and
Russians. Thanks to Radna's foresight, they had each found a trunk
full of suitable clothing on board the _Ariel_. These had been taken
to Drumcraig by Colston, and placed in the cabins intended for their
use, and so they were able to discard the uncouth but useful costumes
in which they had made their escape.

In the afternoon Arnold had had to perform the pleasant task of
showing them over the _Ariel_, explaining the working of the
machinery, and putting the wonderful vessel through various
evolutions to show what she was capable of doing.

He rushed her at full speed through the air, took flying leaps over
outlying spurs of mountain ranges that lay in their path, swooped
down into valleys, and flew over level plains fifty yards from the
ground, like an albatross over the surface of a smooth tropic sea.
Then he soared up from the earth again, until the horizon widened out
to vast extent, and they could see the mighty buttresses of "the Roof
of the World" stretching out below them in an endless succession of
ranges as far as the eye could reach.

Neither Natasha nor the Princess could find words to at all
adequately expre