if only it did not sound so snaky and
wriggling. So, from my trident--or was it a Triton they used to stand
on?--I announce that you and your Augustus are worrying yourselves
gray-headed over an idiotically simple problem. Now, I disposed of it
offhand when I said, 'Man proposes.'"

He seemed to be aware of some one who from a considerable distance was
inquiring her reasons for this statement.

"Because in Saxe-Kesselberg, as in all other German states, when a
prince of the reigning house marries outside of the mediatized nobility
he thereby forfeits his right of succession. It has been done any
number of times. Why, don't you see, Mr. Vanderhoffen? Conceding you
ever do such a thing, your cousin Augustus would become at once the
legal heir. So you must marry. It is the only way, I think, to save
you from regal incarceration and at the same time to reassure the
Prince of Lueminster--that creature's father--that you have not, and
never can have, any claim which would hold good in law. Then Duke
Augustus could peaceably espouse his Sophia and go on reigning---- And,
by the way, I have seen her picture often, and if that is what you call
beauty----" Miss Claridge did not speak this last at least with any air
of pointing out the self-evident.

And, "I believe," he replied, "that all this is actually happening. I
might have known fate meant to glut her taste for irony."

"But don't you see? You have only to marry anybody outside of the
higher nobility--and just as a makeshift----" She had drawn closer in
the urgency of her desire to help him. An infinite despair and mirth
as well was kindled by her nearness. And the man was insane and dimly
knew as much.

And so, "I see," he answered. "But, as it happens, I cannot marry any
woman, because I love a particular woman. At least, I suppose she
isn't anything but just a woman. That statement," he announced, "is a
formal tribute paid by what I call my intellect to what the vulgar call
the probabilities. The rest of me has no patience whatever with such
idiotic blasphemy."

She said, "I think I understand." And this surprised him, coming as it
did from her whom he had always supposed to be the fiancee of Lord
Brudenel's title and bank-account.

"And, well!"--he waved his hands--"either as tutor or as grand-duke,
this woman is unattainable, because she has been far too carefully
reared"--and here he frenziedly thought of that terrible matron whom,
as you kn