oubled,
cared to conceal themselves.

The letter, long-expected and dreaded, had finally crossed the continent
to his hand. It was only the written confirmation of the sentence Fate
had pronounced upon him, even as it had pronounced similar sentences
upon princes and potentates since the beginning of thrones and kingdoms.

While the Prince--or Paul Zalenska, as I will now call him--sat in his
brooding brown study, clutching the imperial letter tightly in his young
hand, his attention was arrested by the sound of voices on the other
side of the hawthorn hedge.

He listened idly, at first, to what seemed to be a one-sided
conversation, in a dull, emotionless feminine voice--a discourse on
fashion, society chit-chat, and hopeless nonentities, interspersed with
bits of gossip. Could women never talk about anything else? he thought
impatiently.

But his displeasure did not seem to affect the course of things at all.
The voice, completely unconscious of the aversion it aroused in the
invisible listener, continued its dreary, expressionless monotone.

"What makes you so silent, Opal? You haven't said a word to-day that you
didn't absolutely have to say. If all American girls are as dreamy as
you, I wonder why our English lords are so irresistibly attracted across
the water when in search of brides!"

And then the Boy on the other side of the hedge felt his sluggish pulse
quicken, and almost started to his feet, impelled by a sudden thrill of
delight; for another voice had spoken--a voice of such infinite charm
and sweetness and vitality, yet with languorous suggestion of emotional
heights and depths, that he felt a vague sense of disappointment when
the magnetic notes finally died away.

"Brides?" the voice echoed, with a lilt of girlish laughter running
through the words. "You mean '_bribes_,' don't you? For I assure you,
dear cousin, it is the metallic clink of American gold, and nothing
else, that lures your great men over the sea. As for my silence, _ma
belle_, I have been uncommunicative because there really seemed nothing
at all worth saying. I can't accustom myself to small-talk--I can't even
listen to it patiently. I always feel a wild impulse to fly far, far
away, where I can close my ears to it all and listen to my own thoughts.
I'm sorry if I disappoint you, Alice--I seem to disappoint everybody
that I would like to please--but I assure you, laugh at my dreams as you
may, to me my dream-life is far more attr