"You great stupid," she exclaimed, "no one did. Do you think I didn't
look?"

"Oh!" said I. "Oh!"

"Sometimes you men are very foolish," she sympathized.

I looked at her a bit in silence. "You have changed since America," I
remarked.

"For the better?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"That's not nice of you," she said.

Then Courtney came up.

"Run along, Major," he ordered; "you've kept the Lady Helen over time."

She took his arm. "Please take me out on the terrace," she said. Then
she smiled at me aggravatingly.

"Maybe our chairs are still vacant; better take Courtney to them," I
said maliciously.

It was not quite fair, possibly; and she told me so with her eyes,
though her lips smiled. I knew I had given her another score to settle.

VI

THE SIXTH DANCE

It was Colonel Bernheim who brought me the Princess's commands for the
dance; and the courteous way he did his office made me like him on the
instant. And this, though there was a certain deference of manner that
was rather suggestive.

The Princess was in the small room behind the throne and, when I was
announced, beckoned me to her.

"Major Dalberg," said she, when I had made my bow, "I have ordered the
band to play an American quickstep; will you dance it with me as it is
done at your great school--West Point, is it not?"

It was done very neatly, indeed. No one of those present could have
imagined there was any prior arrangement as to that particular dance.
I saw the King smile approvingly.

"Your Royal Highness honors my country and its army, but through a very
unworthy representative, I fear," I said, as I gave her my arm. Then
the music began.

I have very little recollection of that dance; but I do know that Dehra
needed no instruction in our way of doing the two-step; she glided
through it as naturally as a Point-girl herself. And, when I told her
so, she shrugged her pretty shoulders and answered:

"You are not the first American attache, you know."

"Nor the last, either," I replied, and then held my peace, though I saw
her hide a smile behind her roses.

"But you are the first that has been my cousin," she said sweetly,--and
I succumbed, of course. Yet I was punished promptly, nevertheless, for
at the throne she stopped and I led her back to the King.

"May I not have another dance later?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Don't you think you have been already favored
more than you deserve, cousin?"

"Yes,"