er mind."

"I suggested that we should leave London," said Lord Burghley gloomily.
"She refuses."

"Then don't press her. Ask her friends to visit her, and don't let her
leave the house except with a competent attendant."

So it was that Eileen found herself practically a prisoner in her own
home. She received the visitors invited by her father at first with a
mechanical courtesy, but later on with an assumption of cheerfulness
that deceived her father and even to more extent the doctor. She had
begun to realise that she would never shake off the vigilance which
surrounded her until she had convinced folk that she had regained her
normal spirits. Her capabilities as an actress, which had won for her
leading parts in many amateur plays, had never been taxed so hardly. But
then she had invariably been cast for comedy. Now she felt she was
playing tragedy. For night and day she never forgot. Always there was
one thought hammering at her brain.

She withdrew into the room as a neat little motor-brougham halted at the
door. In a little while Mrs. Porter-Strangeways was announced.
Reluctantly Eileen condescended to welcome the portly, middle-aged dame
who was tacitly recognised as being the leader of American society in
London. The girl smiled brightly as the woman rose to greet her with
both arms outstretched.

"It is so good of you, dear Mrs. Porter-Strangeways," she exclaimed. "I
have only my friends to look forward to now."

Mrs. Porter-Strangeways indicated her companion by some subtle means of
her own.

"You poor girl!" she exclaimed, throwing just the right reflection of
sympathy into her not unmusical voice. "I called before, but you were
unfit to see any one then. I took the liberty of bringing a friend to
see you--the Princess Petrovska."

The name conveyed nothing to Eileen. She knew not how the woman she
faced was concerned in the tangle in which she herself was involved. She
saw only a slim, beautifully dressed woman, whose age might have been
somewhere between thirty and forty, and who still laid claim to a
gipsy-like beauty. The dark eyes of the Princess dwelt upon the girl
with a sort of well-bred curiosity. Mrs. Porter-Strangeways imparted
information in a swift whisper.

"A Russian title, I believe. Met her in Rome two years ago. She is a
delightful woman--so bright and happy, though I believe, poor dear, she
had a terrible time before her husband died. She called on me yesterday
and asked me to