pse was duly arranged in the adjoining room.

Unable to lock me in the smaller apartment, Sophia declared her
intention of locking both the outer doors of the bedroom, one of
which gave on a corridor, while the other, as the reader is aware,
opened into the boudoir where the previous scene had taken place.

The Princess retained one of these keys herself, entrusting the other
to the maid, of course with the strictest injunctions as to its use.

To keep up appearances before the household, the Princess arranged to
pass the next few nights in another room on the same floor, which
usually served as a guest chamber.

It was explained to the servants that the death which had occurred
had upset the nerves of their mistress, and rendered her own suite of
rooms distasteful to her for the present.

Fauchette, who thus became my jailer, brought me a supply of cold
food and wine during the night. I had part of this provision under
the altar of the oratory, to serve me during the following day.

My cataleptic condition was supposed to endure for nearly twenty-four
hours. The enforced seclusion was intensely irritating to a man of my
temperament; but I could not evade it without revealing to Sophia
that I had heard her confession, and thereby inflicting a deadly
wound on a woman who loved me.

Meanwhile the arrangements for my funeral had been pressed on.

Already a telegram had appeared in the London papers announcing the
sudden and unexpected death from heart-failure of the well-known
English philanthropist, Mr. Melchisedak Sterling. One or two of the
journals commented on the fact of Mr. Sterling's death having taken
place while he was on a mission of peace to the Russian capital, and
expressed a hope that his death would have a chastening effect on the
War Party in Petersburg.

My friend, the editor of the Peace Review, very generously sent a
wreath, which arrived too late for the funeral but was laid on my
grave.

Unfortunately these newspaper announcements were taken seriously by
my exalted employers, as well as by the enemies whom I wished to
deceive, but this could not be helped.

By noon the undertaker's men had arrived with my coffin. The Princess
played upon their ignorance of English customs and burial rites to
pretend that the work of coffining must be done by women's hands. In
this way she and Fauchette were able to enclose the dummy in its
wooden shell, leaving to the men only the task of screwing down th