came so
embarrassing that the Princess was glad to escape from the scene of her
brief triumphs with her cavaliers (Von Embs' liberty having been
purchased by that "credulous old fool," de Marine) to Frankfort, leaving
a wake of debts behind.

Arrived at Frankfort, the fair Circassian resumed her luxurious mode of
life, carrying a part of her retinue of admirers with her, and making it
known that she was daily expecting a large remittance from her good
friend, the Shah of Persia. And it was not long before, thanks to the
offices of de Rochefort-Velcourt, she had at her feet no less a
personage than Philip, Duke of Limburg, and Prince of the Empire, one of
those petty German potentates who assumed more than the airs and
arrogance of kings. Though his duchy was no larger than an English
county, Philip had his ambassadors at the Courts of Vienna and
Versailles; and though he had neither courtiers, army, nor exchequer, he
lavished his titles of nobility and surrounded himself with as much
state and ceremonial as any Tsar or Emperor.

But exalted and serene as was His Highness, he was caught as helplessly
in the toils of the Princess Aly as any lovesick boy; and within a week
of making his first bow had her installed in his Castle of Oberstein,
after satisfying the most clamorous of her creditors with borrowed
money. That there might be no question of obligation, the Princess
repaid him with the most lavish promises to redeem his heavily mortgaged
estate with the millions she was daily expecting from Persia, and to use
her great influence with Tsar and Sultan to support his claim to the
Schleswig and Holstein duchies. And that he might be in no doubt as to
her ability to discharge these promises, she showed him letters,
addressed to her in the friendliest of terms by these august personages.

Each day in the presence of this most alluring of princesses forged new
fetters for the susceptible Duke, until one day she announced to him,
with tears streaming down her pretty cheeks, that she had received a
letter recalling her to Persia--to be married. The crucial hour had
arrived. The Duke, reduced to despair, begs her to accept his own
exalted hand in marriage, vowing that, if she refuses, he will "shut
himself up in a cloister"; and is only restored to a measure of sanity
when she promises to consider his offer.

When Hornstein, the Duke's ambassador to Vienna, appears on the scene,
full of suspicion and doubts, she makes an