equally easy conquest of him.
She announces to his gratified ears her wish to become a Catholic;
flatters him by begging him to act as her instructor in the creed that
is so dear to him; and she reveals to him "for the first time" the true
secret of her identity. She is really, she says, the Princess of Azov,
heiress to vast estates, which may come to her any day; and the first
use she intends to make of her millions is to fill the empty coffers of
the Limburg duchy.

Hornstein is not only converted; he becomes as ardent an admirer as his
master, the Duke. The Princess takes her place as the coming Duchess of
Limburg, much to the disgust of his subjects, who show their feelings by
hissing when she appears in public. Her hour of triumph has
arrived--when, like a bolt from the blue, an anonymous letter comes to
Hornstein revealing the story of her past doings in several capitals of
Europe, and branding her as an "impostor."

For a time the Duke treats these anonymous slanders with scorn. He
refuses to believe a word against his divinity, the beautiful, high-born
woman who is to crown his life's happiness and, incidentally, to save
him from bankruptcy. But gradually the poison begins to work,
supplemented as it is by the suspicions and discontent of his subjects.
At last he summons up courage to ask an explanation--to beg her to
assure him that the charges against her are as false as he believes
them.

She listens to him with quiet dignity until he has finished, and then
replies, with tears in her eyes, that she is not unprepared for
disloyalty from a man who is so obviously the slave of false friends and
of public opinion, but that she had hoped that he would at least have
some pity and consideration for a woman who was about to become the
mother of his child. This unexpected announcement, with its appeal to
his manhood, proves more eloquent than a world of proofs and
protestations. The Duke's suspicions vanish in face of the news that the
woman he loves is to become the mother of his child, and in a moment he
is at her knees imploring her pardon, and uttering abject apologies. He
is now more deeply than ever in her toils, ready to defy the world in
defence of the Princess he adores and can no longer doubt.

It is at this stage that a man who was to play such an important part in
the Princess's life first crosses her path--one Domanski, a handsome
young Pole, whose passionate and ill-fated patriotism had driven him
f