"I didn't know that little window was there," I cried, puzzled.

"It isn't," she said. "It is a secret loop-hole, and it isn't here except in times of great duress. See! I can close it." The oblong blotch abruptly disappeared, only to reappear an instant later. I was beginning to understand. Of course it was in the beleaguered east wing! "I hope I didn't startle you a moment ago."

I resolved to be very stiff and formal about it. "May I enquire, madam, what you are doing in my hou—my castle?"

"You may."

"Well," said I, seeing the point, "what are you doing here?"

"I am living here," she answered distinctly.

"So I perceive," said I, rather too distinctly.

"And I have come down to ask a simple, tiny little favour of you, Mr. Smart," she resumed.

"You know my name?" I cried, surprised.

"I am reading your last book—Are you going?"

"Just a moment, please," I called out, struck by a splendid idea. Reaching inside the window I grasped the lanthorn and brought its rays to bear upon the—perfectly blank wall! I stared open-mouthed and unbelieving. "Good heaven! Have I been dreaming all this?" I cried aloud.

My gaze fell upon two tiny holes in the wall, exposed to view by the bright light of my lamp. They appeared to be precisely in the centre of the spot so recently marked by the elusive oblong. Even as I stared at the holes, a slim object that I at once recognised as a finger protruded from one of them and wiggled at me in a merry but exceedingly irritating manner.

Sensibly I restored the lanthorn to its place inside the window and waited for the mysterious voice to resume.

"Are you so homely as all that?" I demanded when the shadowy face looked out once more. Very clever of me, I thought.

"I am considered rather good-looking," she replied, serenely. "Please don't do that again. It was very rude of you, Mr. Smart." "Oh, I've seen something of you before this," I said. "You have long, beautiful brown hair—and a dog."

She was silent.

"I am sure you will pardon me if I very politely ask who you are?" I went on.

"That question takes me back to the favour. Will you be so very, very kind as to cease bothering me, Mr. Smart? It is dreadfully upsetting, don't you feeling that at any moment you may rush in and—"

"I like that. In my own castle, too!"

"There is ample room for both of us," she said sharply. "I shan't be here for more than a month or six weeks, and I am sure we can get along very amiably under the same roof for that length of time if you'll only forget that I am here."

"I can't very well do that, madam. You see, we are making extensive repairs about the place and you are proving to be a serious obstacle. I cannot grant your request. It will grieve me enormously if I am compelled to smoke you out but I fear—"

"Smoke me out!"

"Perhaps with sulphur," I went on resolutely. "It is said to be very effective."

"Surely you will not do anything so horrid."

"Only as a last resort. First, we shall storm the east wing. Failing in that we shall rely on smoke. You will admit that you have no right to poach on my preserves."

"None whatever," she said, rather plaintively.

I can't remember having heard a sweeter voice than hers. Of course, by this time, I was thoroughly convinced that she was a lady,—a cultured, high-bred lady,—and an American. I was too densely enveloped by the fogginess of my own senses at this time, however, to take in this extraordinary feature of the case. Later on, in the seclusion of my study, the full force of it struck me and I marvelled.

That plaintive note in her voice served its purpose. My firmness seemed to dissolve, even as I sought to reinforce it by an injection of harshness into my own manner of speech.

"Then you should be willing to vacate my premises er—or—"here is where I began to show irresoluteness—"or explain yourself."

"Won't you be generous?"

I cleared my throat nervously. How well they know the cracks in a man's armour!

"I am willing to be—amenable to reason. That's all you ought to expect." A fresh idea took root. "Can't we effect a compromise? A truce, or something of the sort? All I ask is that you explain your presence here. I will promise to be as generous as possible under the circumstances."

"Will you give me three days in which to think it over?" she asked, after a long pause.

"No."

"Well, two days?"

"I'll give you until to-morrow afternoon at five, when I shall expect you to receive me in person."

"That is quite impossible."

"But I demand the right to go wherever I please in my own castle. You—"

"If you knew just how circumspect I am obliged to be at present you wouldn't impose such terms, Mr. Smart."

"Oho! Circumspect! That puts a new light on the case. What have you been up to, madam?" I spoke very severely.

She very properly ignored the banality. "If I should write you a nice, agreeable letter, explaining as much as I can, won't you be satisfied?"

"I prefer to have it by word of mouth."

She seemed to be considering. "I will come to this window to-morrow night at this time and—and let you know," she said reluctantly.

"Very well," said I. "We'll let it rest till then."

"And, by the way, I have something more to ask of you. Is it quite necessary to have all this pounding and hammering going on in the castle? The noise is dreadful. I don't ask it on my own account, but for the baby. You see, she's quite ill with a fever, Mr. Smart. Perhaps you've heard her crying."

"The baby?" I muttered.

"It is nothing serious, of course. The doctor was here to-day and he reassured me—"

"A—a doctor here to-day?" I gasped.

She laughed once more. Verily, it was a gentle, high-bred laugh.

"Will you please put a stop to the noise for a day or two?" she asked, very prettily.

"Certainly," said I too surprised to say anything else. "Is—is there anything else?"

"Nothing, thank you," she replied. Then: "Good night, Mr. Smart. You are very good."

"Don't forget to-morrow—"

But the oblong aperture disappeared with a sharp click, and I found myself staring at the blank, sphynx-like wall.

Taking up my pad, my pipe and my pencil, and leaving all of my cherished ideas out there in the cruel darkness, never to be recovered,—at least not in their original form,—I scrambled through the window, painfully scraping my knee in passing,—just in time to escape the deluge.

I am sure I should have enjoyed a terrific drenching if she had chosen to subject me to it.



CHAPTER IV

I BECOME AN ANCESTOR

True to the promise she had extracted from me, I laid off my workmen the next morning. They trooped in bright and early, considerably augmented by fresh recruits who came to share the benefits of my innocuous prodigality, and if I live to be a thousand I shall never again experience such a noisome half hour as the one I spent in listening to their indignant protests against my tyrannical oppression of the poor and needy. In the end, I agreed to pay them, one and all, for a full day's work, and they went away mollified, calling me a true gentleman to my face and heaven knows what to my back.

I spoke gently to them of the sick baby. With one voice they all shouted:

"But our babies are sick!"

One octogenarian—a carpenter's apprentice—heatedly informed me, through Schmick, that he had a child two weeks old that would die before morning if deprived of proper food and nourishment. Somewhat impressed by this pitiful lament, I enquired how his wife was getting along. The ancient, being in a placid state of senility, courteously thanked me for my interest, and answered that she had been dead for forty-nine years, come September. I overlooked the slight discrepancy.

During the remainder of the day, I insisted on the utmost quiet in our wing of the castle. Poopendyke was obliged to take his typewriter out to the stables, where I dictated scores of letters to him. I caught Britton whistling in the kitchen about noon-time, and severely reprimanded him. We went quite to the extreme, however, when we tiptoed about our lofty halls. All of the afternoon we kept a sharp lookout for the doctor, but if he came we were none the wiser. Britton went into the town at three with the letters and a telegram to my friends in Vienna, imploring them to look up a corps of efficient servants for me and to send them on post-haste. I would have included a request for a competent nurse-maid if it hadn't been for a report from Poopendyke, who announced that he had caught a glimpse of a very nursy looking person at one of the upper windows earlier in the day.

I couldn't, however, for the life of me understand why my neighbour enjoined such rigid silence in our part of the castle and yet permitted that confounded dog of hers to yowl and bark all day. How was I to know that the beast had treed a lizard in the lower hall and couldn't dislodge it?

Britton returned with news. The ferrymen, with great joy in the telling, informed him that the season for tourists parties was just beginning and that we might expect, with them, to do a thriving and prosperous business during the next month or two. Indeed, word already had been received by the tourists company's agent in the town that a party of one hundred and sixty-nine would arrive the next day but one from Munchen, bent on visiting my ruin. In great trepidation, I had all of the gates and doors locked and reinforced by sundry beams and slabs, for I knew the overpowering nature of the collective tourist.

I may be pardoned if I digress at this time to state that the party of one hundred and sixty-nine, both stern and opposite, besieged my castle on the next day but one, with the punctuality of locusts, and despite all of my precautions, all of my devices, all of my objections, effected an entrance and over-ran the place like a swarm of ants. The feat that could not have been accomplished by an armed force was successfully managed by a group of pedagogues from Ohio, to whom "Keep off the Grass" and "No Trespass" are signs of utter impotence on the part of him who puts them up, and ever shall be, world without end. They came, they saw, they conquered, and they tried to buy picture postcards of me.

I mention this in passing, lest you should be disappointed. More anon.

Punctually at nine o'clock, I was in the balcony, thanking my lucky stars that it was a bright, moonlit night. There was every reason to rejoice in the prospect of seeing her face clearly when she appeared at her secret little window. Naturally, I am too much of a gentleman to have projected unfair means of illuminating her face, such as the use of a pocket electric lamp or anything of that sort. I am nothing if not gallant,—when it comes to a pinch. Besides, I was reasonably certain that she would wear a thick black veil. In this I was wrong. She wore a white, filmy one, but it served the purpose. I naturally concluded that she was homely.

"Good evening," she said, on opening the window.

"Good evening," said I, contriving to conceal my disappointment. "How is the baby?"

"Very much better, thank you. It was so good of you to stop the workmen."



"Won't you take off your veil and stay awhile?" I asked, politely facetious. "It isn't quite fair to me, you know."

Her next remark brought a blush of confusion to my cheek. A silly notion had induced me to don my full evening regalia, spike-tail coat and all. Nothing could have been more ludicrously incongruous than my appearance, I am sure, and I never felt more uncomfortable in my life.

"How very nice you look in your new suit," she said, and I was aware of a muffled quality in her ordinarily clear, musical voice. She was laughing at me. "Are you giving a dinner party?"

"I usually dress for dinner," I lied with some haughtiness. "And so does Poopendyke," I added as an afterthought. My blush deepened as I recalled the attenuated blazer in which my secretary breakfasted, lunched and dined without discrimination.

"For Gretel's benefit, I presume."

"Aha! You do know Gretel, then?"

"Oh, I've known her for years. Isn't she a quaint old dear?"

"I shall discharge her in the morning," said I severely. "She is a liar and her husband is a poltroon. They positively deny your existence in any shape or form."

"They won't pay any attention to you," said she, with a laugh. "They are fixtures, quite as much so as the walls themselves. You'll not be able to discharge them. My grandfather tried it fifty years ago and failed. After that he made it a point to dismiss Conrad every day in the year and Gretel every other day. As well try to remove the mountain, Mr. Smart. They know you can't get on without them."

"I have discharged her as a cook," I said, triumphantly. "A new one will be here by the end of the week."

"Oh," she sighed plaintively, "how glad I am. She is an atrocious cook. I don't like to complain, Mr. Smart, but really it is getting so that I can't eat anything she sends up. It is jolly of you to get in a new one. Now we shall be very happy."

"By Jove!" said I, completely staggered by these revelations. Unable to find suitable words to express my sustained astonishment, I repeated: "By Jove!" but in a subdued tone.

"I have thought it over, Mr. Smart," she went on in a business-like manner, "and I believe we will get along much better together if we stay apart."

Ambiguous remarks ordinarily reach my intelligence, but I was so stunned by preceding admissions that I could only gasp:

"Do you mean to say you've been subsisting all this time on my food?"

"Oh, dear me, no! How can you think that of me? Gretel merely cooks the food I buy. She keeps a distinct and separate account of everything, poor thing. I am sure you will not find anything wrong with your bills, Mr. Smart. But did you hear what I said a moment ago?"

"I'm not quite sure that I did."

"I prefer to let matters stand just as they are. Why should we discommode each other? We are perfectly satisfied as we—"

"I will not have my new cook giving notice, madam. You surely can't expect her—or him—to prepare meals for two separate—"

"I hadn't thought of that," she interrupted ruefully. "Perhaps if I were to pay her—or him—extra wages it would be all right," she added, quickly. "We do not require much, you know."

I laughed rather shortly,—meanly, I fear.

"This is most extraordinary, madam!"

"I—I quite agree with you. I'm awfully sorry it had to turn out as it has. Who would have dreamed of your buying the place and coming here to upset everything?"

I resolved to be firm with her. She seemed to be taking too much for granted. "Much as I regret it, madam, I am compelled to ask you to evacuate—to get out, in fact. This sort of thing can't go on."

She was silent for so long that I experienced a slow growth of compunction. Just as I was on the point of slightly receding from my position, she gave me another shock.

"Don't you think it would be awfully convenient if you had a telephone put in, Mr. Smart?" she said. "It is such a nuisance to send Max or Rudolph over to town every whip-stitch on errands when a telephone —in your name, of course—would be so much more satisfactory."

"A telephone!" I gasped.

"Circumstances make it quite unwise for me to have a telephone in my own name, but you could have one in yours without creating the least suspicion. You are—"

"Madam," I cried, and got no farther.

"—perfectly free to have a telephone if you want one," she continued. "The doctor came this evening and it really wasn't necessary. Don't you see you could have telephoned for me and saved him the trip?"

It was due to the most stupendous exertion of self-restraint on my part that I said: "Well, I'll be—jiggered," instead of something a little less unique. Her audacity staggered me. (I was not prepared at that time to speak of it as superciliousness.)

"Madam," I exploded, "will you be good enough to listen to me? I am not to be trifled with. To-morrow sometime I shall enter the east wing of this building if I have to knock down all the doors on the place. Do you understand, madam?"

"I do hope, Mr. Smart, you can arrange to break in about five o'clock. It will afford me a great deal of pleasure to give you some tea. May I expect you at five—or thereabouts?"

Her calmness exasperated me. I struck the stone balustrade an emphatic blow with my fist, sorely peeling the knuckles, and ground out:

"For two cents I'd do it to-night!"

"Oh, dear,—oh, dear!" she cried mockingly.

"You must be a dreadful woman," I cried out. "First, you make yourself at home in my house; then you succeed in stopping my workmen, steal my cook and men-servants, keep us all awake with a barking dog, defying me to my very face—"

"How awfully stern you are!"

"I don't believe a word you say about a sick baby,—or a doctor! It's all poppy-cock. To-morrow you will find yourself, bag and baggage, sitting at the bottom of this hill, waiting for—"

"Wait!" she cried. "Are you really, truly in earnest?"

"Most emphatically!"

"Then I—I shall surrender," she said, very slowly,—and seriously, I was glad to observe.

"That's more like it," I cried, enthusiastically.

"On one condition," she said. "You must agree in advance to let me stay on here for a month or two. It—it is most imperative, Mr. Smart."

"I shall be the sole judge of that, madam," I retorted, with some dignity. "By the way," I went on, knitting my brows, "how am I to get into your side of the castle? Schmick says he's lost the keys."

A good deal depended on her answer.

"They shall be delivered to you to-morrow morning, Mr. Smart," she said, soberly. "Good night."

The little window closed with a snap and I was left alone in the smiling moonlight. I was vastly excited, even thrilled by the prospect of a sleepless night. Something told me I wouldn't sleep a wink, and yet I, who bitterly resent having my sleep curtailed in the slightest degree, held no brief against circumstances. In fact, I rather revelled in the promise of nocturnal distraction. Fearing, however, that I might drop off to sleep at three or four o'clock and thereby run the risk of over sleeping, I dashed off to the head of the stairs and shouted for Britton.

"Britton," I said. "I want to be called at seven o'clock sharp in the morning." Noting his polite struggle to conceal his astonishment, I told him of my second encounter with the lady across the way.

"She won't be expecting you at seven, sir," he remarked. "And, as for that, she may be expecting to call on you, instead of the other way round."

"Right!" said I, considerably dashed.

"Besides, sir, would it not be safer to wait till the tourist party has come and gone?"

"No tourists enter this place to-morrow or any other day," I declared, firmly.

"Well, I'd suggest waiting just the same, sir," said he, evidently inspired.

"Confound them," I growled, somehow absorbing his presentiment.

He hesitated for a moment near the door.

"Will you put in the telephone, sir?" he asked, respectfully.

Very curiously, I was thinking of it at that instant.

"It really wouldn't be a bad idea, Britton," I said, startled into committing myself. "Save us a great deal of legging it over town and all that sort of thing, eh?"

"Yes, sir. What I was about to suggest, sir, is that while we're about it we might as well have a system of electric bells put in. That is to say, sir, in both wings of the castle. Very convenient, sir, you see, for all parties concerned."

"I see," said I, impressed. And then repeated it, a little more impressed after reflection. "I see. You are a very resourceful fellow, Britton. I am inclined to bounce all of the Schmicks. They have known about this from the start and have lied like thieves. By Jove, she must have an extraordinary power over them,—or claim,—or something equally potent. Now I think of it, she mentioned a grandfather. That would go to prove she's related in some way to some one, wouldn't it?"

"I should consider it to be more than likely, sir," said Britton, with a perfectly straight face. He must have been sorely tried in the face of my inane maunderings. "Pardon me, sir, but wouldn't it be a tip-top idea to have it out with the Schmicks to-night? Being, sir, as you anticipate a rather wakeful night, I only make so bold as to suggest it in the hopes you may 'ave some light on the subject before you close your eyes. In other words, sir, so as you won't be altogether in the dark when morning comes. See wot I mean?"

"Excellent idea, Britton. We'll have them up in my study."

He went off to summon my double-faced servitors, while I wended my way to the study. There I found. Mr. Poopendyke, sound asleep in a great arm-chair, both his mouth and his nose open and my first novel also open in his lap.

Conrad and Gretel appeared with Britton after an unconscionable lapse of time, partially dressed and grumbling.

"Where are your sons?" I demanded, at once suspicious.

Conrad shook his sparsely covered head and mumbled something about each being his brother's keeper, all of which was Greek to me until Britton explained that they were not to be found in their customary quarters,—that is to say, in bed. Of course it was quite clear to me that my excellent giants were off somewhere, serving the interests of the bothersome lady in the east wing.

"Conrad," said I, fixing the ancient with a stern, compelling gaze, "this has gone quite far enough."

"Yes, mein herr?"

"Do you serve me, or do you serve the lady in the east wing?"

"I do," said he, with a great deal more wit than I thought he possessed. For a moment I was speechless, but not for the reason you may suspect. I was trying to fix my question and his response quite clearly in my memory so that I might employ them later in the course of a conversation between characters in my forthcoming novel.

"I have been talking with the lady this evening," said I.

"Yes, mein herr; I know," said he.

"Oh, you do, eh? Well, will you be good enough to tell me what the devil is the meaning of all this two-faced, underhanded conduct on your part?"

He lowered his head, closed his thin lips and fumbled with the hem of his smock in a significantly sullen manner. It was evident that he meant to defy me. His sharp little eyes sent a warning look at Gretel, who instantly ceased her mutterings and gave over asking God to bear witness to something or other. She was always dragging in the Deity.

"Now, see here, Conrad, I want the truth from you. Who is this woman, and why are you so infernally set upon shielding her? What crime has she committed? Tell me at once, or, by the Lord Harry, out you go to-morrow,—all of you."

"I am a very old man," he whined, twisting his gnarled fingers, a suggestion of tears in his voice. "My wife is old, mein herr. You would not be cruel. We have been here for sixty years. The old baron—"

"Enough!" I cried resolutely. "Out with it, man. I mean all that I say."

He was still for a long time, looking first at the floor and then at me; furtive, appealing, uncertain little glances from which he hoped to derive comfort by catching me with a twinkle in my eye. I have a stupid, weak way of letting a twinkle appear there even when I am trying to be harsh and domineering. Britton has noticed it frequently, I am sure, and I think he rather depends upon it. But now I realised, if never before, that to betray the slightest sign of gentleness would be to forever forfeit my standing as master in my own house. Conrad saw no twinkle. He began to weaken.

"To-morrow, mein herr, to-morrow," he mumbled, in a final plea. I shook my head. "She will explain everything to-morrow," he went on eagerly. "I am sworn to reveal nothing, mein herr. My wife, too, and my sons. We may not speak until she gives the word. Alas! we shall be turned out to die in our—"

"We have been faithful servants to the Rothhoefens for sixty years," sobbed his wife.

"And still are, I suspect," I cried angrily.

"Ach, mein herr, mein herr!" protested Conrad, greatly perturbed.

"Where are the keys, you old rascal?" I demanded so sternly that even Poopendyke was startled.

Conrad almost resorted to the expediency of grovelling. "Forgive! forgive!" he groaned. "I have done only what was best."

"Produce the keys, sir!"

"But not to-night, not to-night," he pleaded. "She will be very angry. She will not like it, mein herr. Ach, Gott! She will drive us out, she will shame us all! Ach, and she who is so gentle and so unhappy and so—so kind, to all of us! I—I cannot—I cannot! No!"

Mr. Poopendyke's common sense came in very handily at this critical juncture. He counselled me to let the matter rest until the next morning, when, it was reasonable to expect, the lady herself would explain everything. Further appeal to Schmick was like butting one's head against a stone wall, he said. Moreover, Conrad's loyalty to the lady was most commendable.

Conrad and Gretel beamed on Poopendyke. They thanked him so profoundly, that I couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for myself, a tyrant without a backbone.

"Jah, jah!" Conrad cried gladly. "To-morrow she will explain. Time enough, Herr Poopendyke. Time enough, eh?"

"Well," said I, somewhat feebly, "where do I come in?"

They caught the note of surrender in my voice and pounced upon their opportunity. Before they had finished with me, it was quite thoroughly established that I was not to come in at all until my neighbour was ready to admit me. They convinced me that I was a meek, futile suppliant and not the master of a feudal stronghold. Somehow I was made to feel that if I didn't behave myself I stood in considerable danger of being turned off the place. However, we forced something out of Schmick before his stalwart sons came tramping up the stairs to rescue him. The old man gave us a touch of inside history concerning Schloss Rothhoefen and its erstwhile powerful barons, not to minimise in the least sense the peculiar prowess of the present Amazon who held forth to-night in the east wing and who, I had some reason to suspect, was one of the family despite the unmistakable flavour of Fifth Avenue and Newport.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the last of the real barons,—the powerful, land-owning, despotic barons, I mean,—came to the end of his fourscore years and ten, and was laid away with great pomp and glee by the people of the town across the river. He was the last of the Rothhoefens, for he left no male heir. His two daughters had married Austrian noblemen, and neither of them produced a male descendant. The estate, already in a state of financial as well as physical disintegration, fell into the hands of women, and went from bad to worse so rapidly that long before the last quarter of the century was fairly begun the castle and the reduced holdings slipped away from the Rothhoefens altogether and into the control of the father of the Count from whom I purchased the property. The Count's father, it appears, was a distiller of great wealth in his day, and a man of action. Unfortunately he died before he had the chance to carry out his projects in connection with the rehabilitation of Schloss Rothhoefen, even then a deserted, ramshackle resort for paying tourists and a Mecca for antique and picture dealers.

The new Count—my immediate predecessor—was not long in dissipating the great fortune left by his father, the worthy distiller. He had run through with the bulk of his patrimony by the time he was twenty-five and was pretty much run down at the heel when he married in the hope of recouping his lost fortune.

The Schmicks did not like him. They did not approve of him as lord and master, nor was it possible for them to resign themselves to the fate that had put this young scapegrace into the shoes, so to speak, of the grim old barons Rothhoefen, who whatever else they may have been in a high-handed sort of way were men to the core. This pretender, this creature without brains or blood, this sponging reprobate, was not to their liking, if I am to quote Conrad, who became quite forceful in his harangue against the recent order of things.

He, his wife and his sons, he assured me, were full of rejoicing when they learned that the castle had passed from Count Hohendahl's hands into mine. I, at least, would pay them their wages and I might, in a pinch, be depended upon to pension them when they got too old to be of any use about the castle.

At any rate, it seems, I was a distinct improvement over the Count, who had been their master for a dozen very lean and unprofitable years. Things might be expected to look up a bit, with me at the head of the house. Was it not possible for a new and mighty race to rise and take the place of the glorious Rothhoefens? A long line of Baron Schmarts? With me as the prospective root of a thriving family tree! At least, that is what Conrad said, and I may be pardoned for quoting him.

I am truly sorry the old rascal put it into my head.

But the gist of the whole matter was this: There are no more Rothhoefens, and soon, God willing, there would be no more Hohendahls. Long live the Schmarts! Conrad invariably pronounced my name with the extra consonants and an umlaut.

All attempts on my part to connect the lady in the east wing with the history of the extinct Rothhoefens were futile. He would not commit himself.

"Well," said I, yawning in helpless collusion with the sleepy Gretel, "we'll let it go over till morning. Call me at seven, Britton."

Conrad made haste to assure me that the lady would not receive me before eleven o'clock. He begged me to sleep till nine, and to have pleasant dreams.

I went to bed but not to sleep. It was very clear to me that my neighbour was a disturber in every sense of the word. She wouldn't let me sleep. For two hours I tried to get rid of her, but she filtered into my brain and prodded my thoughts into the most violent activity. She wouldn't stay put.

My principal thoughts had to do with her identity. Somehow I got it into my head that she was one of the female Rothhoefens, pitiable nonentities if Conrad's estimate is to be accepted. A descendant of one of those girl-bearing daughters of the last baron! It sounded very agreeable to my fancy's ear, and I cuddled the hope that my surmise was not altogether preposterous.

My original contention that she was a poor relation of old Schmick and somewhat dependent upon him for charity—to say the least—had been set aside for more reliable convictions. Instead of being dependent upon the Schmicks, she seemed to be in an exalted position that gave her a great deal more power over them than even I possessed: they served her, not me. From time to time there occurred to me the thought that my own position in the household was rather an ignoble one, and that I was a very weak and incompetent successor to baronial privileges, to say nothing of rights. A real baron would have had her out of there before you could mention half of Jack Robinson, and there wouldn't have been any sleep lost over distracting puzzles. I deplored my lack of bad manners.

It was quite reasonable to assume that she was young, but the odds were rather against her being beautiful. Pretty women usually adjure such precautions as veils. Still, this was speculation, and my reasoning is not always sound, for which I sometimes thank heaven. She had a baby. At least, I suppose it was hers. If not, whose? This set me off on a new and apparently endless round of speculation, obviously silly and sentimental.

Now I have humbly tried to like babies. My adolescent friends and acquaintances have done their best to educate me along this particular line, with the result that I suppose I despise more babies than any man in the world. My friends, it would appear, are invariably married to each other and they all have babies for me to go into false ecstasies over. No doubt babies are very nice when they don't squawk or pull your nose or jab you in the eye, but through some strange and prevailing misfortune I have never encountered one when it was asleep. If they are asleep, the parents compel me to walk on tip-toe and speak in whispers at long range; the instant they awake and begin to yawp, I am ushered into the presence, or vice versa, and the whole world grows very small and congested and is carried about in swaddling clothes.

There is but one way for a bachelor to overcome his horror of babies, and he shouldn't wait too long.

I went to sleep about four o'clock, still oppressed by the dread of meeting a new baby.

My contact with the one hundred and sixty-nine sight-seers was brief but exceedingly convincing. They invaded the castle before I was out of bed, having—as I afterwards heard—the breweries, an art gallery and the Zoological gardens to visit before noon and therefore were required to make an early start. The cathedral, which is always open to visitors and never has any one sleeping in it, was reserved for the afternoon.

I was aroused from my belated sleep by the sound of mighty cataracts and the tread of countless elephants. Too late I realised that the tourists were upon me! Too late I remembered that the door to my room had been left unlocked! The hundred and sixty-nine were huddled outside my door, drinking in the monotonous drivel of the guide who had a shrill, penetrating voice and not the faintest notion of a conscience.

I listened in dismay for a moment, and then, actuated by something more than mere fury, leaped out of bed and prepared for a dash across the room to lock the door. On the third stride I whirled and made a flying leap into the bed, scuttling beneath the covers with the speed and accuracy of a crawfish. Just in time, too, for the heavy door swung slowly open a second later, and the shrill, explanatory voice was projected loudly into my lofty bed chamber.

"Come a little closer, please," said the morose man with the cap. "This room was occupied for centuries by the masters of Schloss Rothhoefen. It is a bed chamber. See the great baronial bed. It has not been slept in for more than two hundred years. The later barons refused to sleep in it because one of their ancestors had been assassinated between its sheets at the tender age of six. He was stabbed by a step-uncle who played him false. This room is haunted. Observe the curtains of the bed. They are of the rarest silk and have been there for three hundred years, coming from Damascus in the year 1695. Now we will pass on to the room occupied by all of the great baronesses up to the nineteenth—"

A resolute beholder spoke up: "Can't we step inside?"

"If you choose, madam. But we must waste no time."

"I do so want to see where the old barons slept."

"Please do not handle the bedspreads and curtains. They will fall to pieces—"

I heard no more, for the vanguard had pushed him aside and was swooping down upon me. A sharp-nosed lady led the way. She was within three feet of the bed and was stretching out her hand to touch the proscribed fabrics when I sat bolt upright and yelled:

"Get out!"

Afterwards I was told that the guide was the first to reach the bottom of the stairs and that he narrowly escaped death in the avalanche of horrified humanity that piled after him, pursued by the puissant ghost of a six-year-old ancestor.



CHAPTER V

I MEET THE FOE AND FALL

The post that morning, besides containing a telegram from Vienna apprising me of the immediate embarkation of four irreproachable angels in the guise of servants, brought a letter from my friends the Hazzards, inquiring when my castle would be in shape to receive and discharge house parties without subjecting them to an intermediate season of peril from drafts, leaky roofs, damp sheets and vampires.

They implored me to snatch them and one or two friends from the unbearable heat of the city, if only for a few days, appending the sad information that they were swiftly being reduced to grease spots. Dear Elsie added a postscript of unusual briefness and clarity in which she spelt grease with an e instead of an a, but managed to consign me to purgatory if I permitted her to become a spot no larger than the inky blot she naively deposited beside her signature, for all the world like the seal on a death warrant.

I sat down and looked about me in gloomy despair. No words can describe the scene, unless we devote a whole page to repeating the word "dismal." Devastation always appears to be more complete of a morning I have observed in my years of experience. A plasterer's scaffolding that looks fairly nobby at sunset is a grim, unsightly skeleton at breakfast-time. A couple of joiners' horses, a matrix or two, a pile of shavings and some sawed-off blocks scattered over the floor produce a matutinal conception of chaos that hangs over one like a pall until his aesthetic sense is beaten into subjection by the hammers of a million demons in the guise of carpenters. Morning in the midst of repairs is an awful thing! I looked, despaired and then dictated a letter to the Hazzards, urging them to come at once with all their sweltering friends!

I needed some one to make me forget.

At eleven o'clock, Poopendyke brought me a note from the chatelaine of the east wing. It had been dropped into the courtyard from one of the upper windows. The reading of it transformed me into a stern, relentless demon. She very calmly announced that she had a headache and couldn't think of being disturbed that day and probably not the next.

My mind was made up in an instant. I would not be put off by a headache,—which was doubtless assumed for the occasion,—and I would be master of my castle or know the reason why, etc.

In the courtyard I found a score or more of idle artisans, banished by the on-sweeping tourists and completely forgotten by me in the excitement of the hour. Commanding them to fetch their files, saws, broad-axes and augurs, I led the way to the mighty doors that barred my entrance to the other side. Utterly ignoring the supplications of Conrad Schmick and the ominous frowns of his two sons, we set about filing off the padlocks, and chiselling through the wooden panels. I stood over my toiling minions and I venture to say that they never worked harder or faster in their lives. By twelve o'clock we had the great doors open and swept on to the next obstruction.

At two o'clock the last door in the east ante-chamber gave way before our resolute advance and I stood victorious and dusty in the little recess at the top of the last stairway. Beyond the twentieth century portieres of a thirteenth century doorway lay the goal we sought. I hesitated briefly before drawing them apart and taking the final plunge. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to feel ashamed of myself. Suppose that she really had a headache! What an uncouth, pusillanimous brute I—

Just then, even as my hand fell upon the curtains, they were snatched aside and I found myself staring into the vivid, uptilted face of the lady who had defied me and would continue to do so if my suddenly active perceptions counted for anything.

I saw nothing but the dark, indignant, imperious eyes. They fairly withered me.

In some haste, attended by the most disheartening nervousness, I tried to find my cap to remove it in the presence of royalty. Unfortunately I was obliged to release the somewhat cumbersome crowbar I had been carrying about with me, and it dropped with a sullen thwack upon my toes. In moments of gravity I am always doing something like that. The pain was terrific, but I clutched at the forlorn hope that she might at least smile over my agony.

"I beg your pardon," I began, and then discovered that I was not wearing a cap. It was most disconcerting.

"So you would come," she said, very coldly and very levelly. I have a distinct recollection of shrinking. If you have ever tried to stand flatly upon a foot whose toes are crimped by an excruciating pain you may understand something of the added discomfiture that afflicted me.

"It—it was necessary, madam," I replied as best I could. "You defied me. I think you should have appreciated my position—my motives—er—my—"

She silenced me—luckily, heaven knows—with a curt exclamation.

"Your position! It is intensely Napoleonic," said she with fine irony. Her gaze swept my horde of panting, wide-eyed house-breakers. "What a noble victory!"

It was quite time for me to assert myself. Bowing very stiffly, I remarked:

"I regret exceedingly to have been forced to devastate my own property in such a trifling enterprise, madam. The physical loss is apparent,—you can see that for yourself,—but of course you have no means of estimating the mental destruction that has been going on for days and days. You have been hacking away at my poor, distracted brain so persistently that it really had to give way. In a measure, this should account for my present lapse of sanity. Weak-mindedness is not a crime, but an affliction."

She did not smile.

"Well, now that you are here, Mr. Smart, may I be so bold as to inquire what you are going to do about it?"

I reflected. "I think, if you don't mind, I'll come in and sit down. That was a deuce of a rap I got across the toes. I am sure to be a great deal more lenient and agreeable if I'm asked to come in and see you. Incidentally, I thought I'd step up to inquire how your headache is getting on. Better, I hope?"

She turned her face away. I suspected a smile.

"If you choose to bang your old castle to pieces, in order to satisfy a masculine curiosity, Mr. Smart, I have nothing more to say," she said, facing me again—still ominously, to my despair. Confound it all, she was such a slim, helpless little thing—and all alone against a mob of burly ruffians! I could have kicked myself, but even that would have been an aimless enterprise in view of the fact that Poopendyke or any of the others could have done it more accurately than I and perhaps with greater respect. "Will you be good enough to send your—your army away, or do you prefer to have it on hand in case I should take it into my head to attack you?"

"Take 'em away, Mr. Poopendyke," I commanded hurriedly. I didn't mind Poopendyke hearing what she said, but it would be just like one of those beggars to understand English—and also to misunderstand it. "And take this beastly crowbar with you, too. It has served its purpose nobly."

Poopendyke looked his disappointment, and I was compelled to repeat the order. As they crowded down the short, narrow stairway, I remarked old Conrad and his two sons standing over against the wall, three very sinister figures. They remained motionless.

"I see, madam, that you do not dismiss your army," I said, blandly sarcastic.

"Oh, you dear old Conrad!" she cried, catching sight of the hitherto submerged Schmicks. The three of them bobbed and scraped and grinned from ear to ear. There could be no mistaking the intensity of their joy. "Don't look so sad, Conrad. I know you are blameless. You poor old dear!"

I have never seen any one who looked less sad than Conrad Schmick. Or could it be possible that he was crying instead of laughing? In either case I could not afford to have him doing it with such brazen discourtesy to me, so I rather peremptorily ordered him below.

"I will attend to you presently,—all of you," said I. They did not move. "Do you hear me?" I snapped angrily. They looked stolidly at the slim young lady.

She smiled, rather proudly, I thought. "You may go, Conrad. I shall not need you. Max, will you fetch up another scuttle of coal?"

They took their orders from her! It even seemed to me that Max moved swiftly, although it was doubtless a hallucination on my part, brought about by nervous excitement.

"By Jove!" I said, looking after my trusty men-servants as they descended. "I like this! Are they my servants or yours?"

"Oh, I suppose they are yours, Mr. Smart," she said carelessly. "Will you come in now, and make yourself quite at home?"

"Perhaps I'd better wait for a day or two," said I, wavering. "Your headache, you know. I can wait just as well as—"

"Oh, no. Since you've gone to all the trouble I suppose you ought to have something for your pains."

"Pains?" I murmured, and I declare to heaven I limped as I followed her through the door into a tiny hall.

"You are a most unreasonable man," she said, throwing open a small door at the end of the hall. "I am terribly disappointed in you. You looked to be so nice and sensible and amiable."

"Oh, I'm not such a nincompoop as you might suspect, madam," said I, testily, far from complimented. I dislike being called nice, and sometimes I think it a mistake to be sensible. A sensible person never gets anything out of life because he has to avoid so much of it.

"And now, Mr. Smart, will you be kind enough to explain this incomprehensible proceeding on your part?" she said, facing me sternly.

But I was dumb. I stood just inside the door of the most remarkable apartment it has ever been my good fortune to look upon. My senses reeled. Was I awake? Was this a part of the bleak, sinister, weather-racked castle in which I was striving so hard to find a comfortable corner?

"Well?" she demanded relentlessly.

"By the Lord Harry," I began, finding my tongue only to lose it again. My bewilderment increased, and for an excellent reason.

The room was completely furnished, bedecked and rendered habitable by an hundred and one articles that were mysteriously missing from my side of the castle. Rugs, tapestries, curtains of the rarest quality; chairs, couches, and cushions; tables, cabinets and chests that would have caused the eyes of the most conservative collector of antiques to bulge with—not wonder—but greed; stands, pedestals, brasses, bronzes, porcelains—but why enumerate? On the massive oaken centre table stood the priceless silver vase we had missed on the second day of our occupancy, and it was filled with fresh yellow roses. I sniffed. Their fragrance filled the room.

And so complete had been the rifling of my rooms by the devoted vandals in their efforts to make this lady cosy and comfortable that they did not overlook a silver-framed photograph of my dear mother! Her sweet face met my gaze as it swept the mantel-piece, beneath which a coal fire crackled merrily. I am not quite sure, but I think I repeated "by the Lord Harry" once if not twice before I caught myself up.

I tried to smile. "How—how cosy you are here," I said.

"You couldn't expect me to live in this awful place without some of the comforts and conveniences of life, Mr. Smart," she said defiantly.

"Certainly not," I said, promptly. "I am sure that you will excuse me, however, if I gloat. I was afraid we had lost all these things. You've no idea how relieved I am to find them all safe and sound in my—in their proper place. I was beginning to distrust the Schmicks. Now I am convinced of their integrity."

"I suppose you mean to be sarcastic."

"Sarcasm at any price, madam, would be worse than useless, I am sure."

Crossing to the fireplace, I selected a lump of coal from the scuttle and examined it with great care. She watched me curiously.

"Do you recognise it?" she asked.

"I do," said I, looking up. "It has been in our family for generations. My favourite chunk, believe me. Still, I part with it cheerfully." Thereupon I tossed it into the fire. "Don't be shocked! I shan't miss it. We have coals to burn, madam!"

She looked at me soberly for a moment. There was something hurt and wistful in her dark eyes.

"Of course, Mr. Smart, I shall pay you for everything—down to the smallest trifle—when the time comes for me to leave this place. I have kept strict account of—"

She turned away, with a beaten droop of the proud little head, and again I was shamed. Never have I felt so grotesquely out of proportion with myself as at that moment. My stature seemed to increase from an even six feet to something like twelve, and my bulk became elephantine. She was so slender, so lissom, so weak, and I so gargantuan, so gorilla-like, so heavy-handed! And I had come gaily up to crush her! What a fine figure of a man I was!

She did not complete the sentence, but walked slowly toward the window. I had a faint glimpse of a dainty lace handkerchief fiercely clutched in a little hand.

By nature I am chivalrous, even gallant. You may have reason to doubt it, but it is quite true. As I've never had a chance to be chivalrous except in my dreams or my imagination, I made haste to seize this opportunity before it was too late. "Madam," I said, with considerable feeling. "I have behaved like a downright rotter to-day. I do not know who you are, nor why you are here, but I assure you it is of no real consequence if you will but condescend to overlook my insufferable—"

She turned towards me. The wistful, appealing look still lingered in her eyes. The soft red nether lip seemed a bit tremulous.

"I am an intruder," she interrupted, smiling faintly. "You have every right to put me out of your—your home, Mr. Smart. I was a horrid pig to deprive you of all your nice comfortable chairs and—"

"I—I haven't missed them."

"Don't you ever sit down?"

"I will sit down if you'll let me," said I, feeling that I wouldn't appear quite so gigantic if I was sitting.

"Please do. The chairs all belong to you."

"I'm sorry you put it in that way. They are yours as long as you choose to—to occupy a furnished apartment here."

"I have been very selfish, and cattish, and inconsiderate, Mr. Smart. You see, I'm a spoilt child. I've always had my own way in everything. You must look upon me as a very horrid, sneaking, conspiring person, and I—I really think you ought to turn me out."

She came a few steps nearer. Under the circumstances I could not sit down. So I stood towering above her, but somehow going through a process of physical and mental shrinkage the longer I remained confronting her.

Suddenly it was revealed to me that she was the loveliest woman I had ever seen in all my life! How could I have been so slow in grasping this great, bewildering truth? The prettiest woman I had ever looked upon! Of course I had known it from the first instant that I looked into her eyes, but I must have been existing in a state of stupefaction up to this illuminating moment.

I am afraid that I stared.

"Turn you out?" I cried. "Turn you out of this delightful room after you've had so much trouble getting it into shape? Never!"

"Oh, you don't know how I've imposed upon you!" she cried plaintively. "You don't know how I've robbed you, and bothered you—"

"Yes, I do," said I promptly. "I know all about it. You've been stealing my coals, my milk, my ice, my potatoes, my servants, my sleep and "—here I gave a comprehensive sweep of my hand—"everything in sight. And you've made us walk on tip-toe to keep from waking the baby, and—" I stopped suddenly. "By the way, whose baby is it? Not yours, I'm sure."

To my surprise her eyes filled with tears.

"Yes. She is my baby, Mr. Smart."

My face fell. "Oh!" said I, and got no further for a moment or two. "I—I—please don't tell me you are married!"

"What would you think of me if I were to tell you I'm not?" she cried indignantly.

"I beg your pardon," I stammered, blushing to the roots of my hair. "Stupid ass!" I muttered.

Crossing to the fireplace, she stood looking down into the coals for a long time, while I remained where I was, an awkward, gauche spectator, conscious of having put my clumsiest foot into my mouth every time I opened it and wondering whether I could now safely get it out again without further disaster.

Her back was toward me. She was dressed in a dainty, pinkish house gown—or maybe it was light blue. At any rate it was a very pretty gown and she was wonderfully graceful in it. Ordinarily in my fiction I am quite clever at describing gowns that do not exist; but when it comes to telling what a real woman is wearing, I am not only as vague as a savage, but painfully stupid about colors. Still, I think it was pink. I recall the way her soft brown hair grew above the slender neck, and the lovely white skin; the smooth, delicate contour of her half-averted cheek and the firm little chin with the trembling red lips above it; the shapely back and shoulders and the graceful curves of her hips, suggestive of a secret perfection. She was taller than I had thought at first sight, or was it that I seemed to be getting smaller myself? A hasty bit of comparison placed her height at five feet six, using my own as something to go by. She couldn't have been a day over twenty-two. But she had a baby!

Facing me once more she said: "If you will sit down, Mr. Smart, and be patient and generous with me, I shall try to explain everything. You have a right to demand it of me, and I shall feel more comfortable after it is done."

I drew up a chair beside the table and sat down. She sank gracefully into another, facing me. A delicate frown appeared on her brow.

"Doubtless you are very much puzzled by my presence in this gloomy old castle. You have been asking yourself a thousand questions about me, and you have been shocked by my outrageous impositions upon your good nature. I confess I have been shockingly impudent and—"

"Pardon me; you are the only sauce I've had for an excessively bad bargain."

"Please do not interrupt me," she said coldly. "I am here, Mr. Smart, because it is the last place in the world where my husband would be likely to look for me."

"Your husband? Look for you?"

"Yes. I shall be quite frank with you. My husband and I have separated. A provisional divorce was granted, however, just seven months ago. The final decree cannot be issued for one year."

"But why should you hide from him?"

"The—the court gave him the custody of our child during the probationary year. I—I have run away with her. They are looking for me everywhere. That is why I came here. Do you understand?"

I was stunned. "Then, I take it, the court granted him the divorce and not you," I said, experiencing a sudden chill about the heart. "You were deprived of the child, I see. Dear me!"

"You are mistaken," she said, a flash in her eyes. "It was an Austrian court. The Count—my husband, I should say—is an Austrian subject. His interests must be protected." She said this with a sneer on her pretty lips. "You see, my father, knowing him now for what he really is, has refused to pay over to him something like a million dollars, still due for the marriage settlement. The Count contends that it is a just and legal debt and the court supports him to this extent: the child is to be his until the debt is cleared up, or something to that effect. I really don't understand the legal complications involved. Perhaps it were better if I did."

"I see," said I, scornful in spite of myself. "One of those happy international marriages where a bride is thrown in for good measure with a couple of millions. Won't we ever learn!"

"That's it precisely," she said, with the utmost calmness and candour. "American dollars and an American girl in exchange for a title, a lot of debts and a ruined life."

"And they always turn out just this way. What a lot of blithering fools we have in the land of the free and the home of the knave!"

"My father objected to the whole arrangement from the first, so you must not speak of him as a knave," she protested. "He doesn't like Counts and such things."

"I don't see that it helps matters. I can hardly substitute the word 'brave' for the one I used," said I, trying to conceal my disgust.

"Please don't misunderstand me, Mr. Smart," she said haughtily. "I am not asking for pity. I made my bed and I shall lie in it. The only thing I ask of you is—well, kindness."

She seemed to falter again, and once more I was at her feet, figuratively speaking.

"You are in distress, in dread of something, madam," I cried. "Consider me your friend."

She shook her head ruefully. "You poor man! You don't know what you are in for, I fear. Wait till I have told you everything. Three weeks ago, I laid myself liable to imprisonment and heaven knows what else by abducting my little girl. That is really what it comes to—abduction. The court has ordered my arrest, and all sorts of police persons are searching high and low for me. Now don't you see your peril? If they find me here, you will be in a dreadful predicament. You will be charged with criminal complicity, or whatever it is called, and—Oh, it will be frightfully unpleasant for you, Mr. Smart."

My expression must have convicted me. She couldn't help seeing the dismay in my face. So she went on, quite humbly.

"Of course you have but to act at once and all may be well for you. I—I will go if you—if you command me to—"

I struck my knee forcibly. "What do you take me for, madam? Hang the consequences! If you feel that you are safe here—that is, comparatively safe,—stay!"

"It will be terrible if you get into trouble with the law," she murmured in distress. "I—I really don't know what might happen to you." Still her eyes brightened. Like all the rest of her ilk, she was selfish.

I tried to laugh, but it was a dismal failure. After all, wasn't it likely to prove a most unpleasant matter? I felt the chill moisture breaking out on my forehead.

"Pray do not consider my position at all," I managed to say, with a resolute assumption of gallantry. "I—I shall be perfectly able to look out for myself,—that is, to explain everything if it should come to the worst." I could not help adding, however: "I certainly hope, however, that they don't get on to your trail and—" I stopped in confusion.

"And find me here?" she completed gloomily.

"And take the child away from you," I made haste to explain.

A fierce light flamed in her eyes. "I should—kill—some one before that could happen," she cried out, clenching her hands.

"I—I beg of you, madam, don't work yourself into a—a state," I implored, in considerable trepidation. "Nothing like that can happen, believe me. I—"

"Oh, what do you know about it?" she exclaimed, with most unnecessary vehemence, I thought. "He wants the child and—and—well, you can see why he wants her, can't you? He is making the most desperate efforts to recover her. Max says the newspapers are full of the—the scandal. They are depicting me as a brainless, law-defying American without sense of love, honour or respect. I don't mind that, however. It is to be expected. They all describe the Count as a long-suffering, honourable, dreadfully maltreated person, and are doing what they can to help him in the prosecution of the search. My mother, who is in Paris, is being shadowed; my two big brothers are being watched; my lawyers in Vienna are being trailed everywhere—oh, it is really a most dreadful thing. But—but I will not give her up! She is mine. He doesn't love her. He doesn't love me. He doesn't love anything in the world but himself and his cigarettes. I know, for I've paid for his cigarettes for nearly three years. He has actually ridiculed me in court circles, he has defamed me, snubbed me, humiliated me, cursed me. You cannot imagine what it has been like. Once he struck me in—"

"Struck you!" I cried.

"—in the presence of his sister and her husband. But I must not distress you with sordid details. Suffice it to say, I turned at last like the proverbial worm. I applied for a divorce ten months ago. It was granted, provisionally as I say. He is a degenerate. He was unfaithful to me in every sense of the word. But in spite of all that, the court in granting me the separation, took occasion to placate national honour by giving him the child during the year, pending the final disposition of the case. Of course, everything depends on father's attitude in respect to the money. You see what I mean? A month ago I heard from friends in Vienna that he was shamefully neglecting our—my baby, so I took this awful, this perfectly bizarre way of getting her out of his hands. Possession is nine points in the law, you see. I—'

"Alas!" interrupted I, shaking my head. "There is more than one way to look at the law. I'm afraid you have got yourself into a serious—er—pickle."'

"I don't care," she said defiantly. "It is the law's fault for not prohibiting such marriages as ours. Oh, I know I must seem awfully foolish and idiotic to you, but—but it's too late now to back out, isn't it ?"

I did not mean to say it, but I did—and I said it with some conviction: "It is! You must be protected."

"Thank you, thank you!" she cried, clasping and unclasping her little hands. I found myself wondering if the brute had dared to strike her on that soft, pink cheek!

Suddenly a horrible thought struck me with stunning force.

"Don't tell me that your—your husband is the man who owned this castle up to a week ago," I cried. "Count James Hohendahl?"

She shook her head. "No. He is not the man." Seeing that I waited for her to go on, she resumed: "I know Count James quite well, however. He is my husband's closest friend."

"Good heaven," said I, in quick alarm. "That complicates matters, doesn't it? He may come here at any time."

"It isn't likely, Mr. Smart. To be perfectly honest with you, I waited until I heard you had bought the castle before coming here myself. We were in hiding at the house of a friend in Linz up to a week ago. I did not think it right or fair to subject them to the notoriety or the peril that was sure to follow if the officers took it into their heads to look for me there. The day you bought the castle, I decided that it was the safest place for me to stay until the danger blows over, or until father can arrange to smuggle me out of this awful country. That very night we were brought here in a motor. Dear old Conrad and Mrs. Schmick took me in. They have been perfectly adorable, all of them."

"May I enquire, madam," said I stiffly, "how you came to select my abode as your hiding place?"

"Oh, I have forgotten to tell you that we lived here one whole summer just after we were married. Count Hohendahl let us have the castle for our—our honey-moon. He was here a great deal of the time. All sorts of horrid, nasty, snobbish people were here to help us enjoy our honeymoon. I shall never forget that dreadful summer. My only friends were the Schmicks. Every one else ignored and despised me, and they all borrowed, won or stole money from me. I was compelled to play bridge for atrociously high stakes without knowing one card from the other. But, as I say, the Schmicks loved me. You see they were in the family ages and ages before I was born."

"The family? What family?"

"The Rothhoefen family. Haven't they told you that my great-grandmother was a Rothhoefen? No? Well, she was. I belong to the third generation of American-born descendants. Doesn't it simplify matters, knowing this?"

"Immensely," said I, in something of a daze.

"And so I came here, Mr. Smart, where hundreds of my ancestors spent their honeymoons, most of them perhaps as unhappily as I, and where I knew a fellow-countryman was to live for awhile in order to get a plot for a new story. You see, I thought I might be a great help to you in the shape of suggestion."

She smiled very warmly, and I thought it was a very neat way of putting it. Naturally it would be quite impossible to put her out after hearing that she had already put herself out to some extent in order to assist me.

"I can supply the villain for your story if you need one, and I can give you oceans of ideas about noblemen. I am sorry that I can't give you a nice, sweet heroine. People hate heroines after they are married and live unhappily. You—"

"The public taste is changing," I interrupted quickly. "Unhappy marriages are so common nowadays that the women who go into 'em are always heroines. People like to read about suffering and anguish among the rich, too. Besides, you are a Countess. That puts you near the first rank among heroines. Don't you think it would be proper at this point to tell me who you are?"

She regarded me steadfastly for a moment, and then shook her head.

"I'd rather not tell you my name, Mr. Smart. It really can't matter, you know. I've thought it all out very carefully, and I've decided that it is not best for you to know. You see if you don't know who it is you are sheltering, the courts can't hold you to account. You will be quite innocent of deliberately contriving to defeat the law. No, I shall not tell you my name, nor my husband's, nor my father's. If you'd like to know, however, I will tell you my baby's name. She's two years old and I think she'll like you to call her Rosemary."

By this time I was quite hypnotised by this charming, confident trespasser upon my physical—and I was about to say my moral estate. Never have I known a more complacent violater of all the proprieties of law and order as she appeared to be. She was a revelation; more than that, she was an inspiration. What a courageous, independent, fascinating little buccaneer she was! Her calm tone of assurance, her overwhelming confidence in herself, despite the occasional lapse into despair, staggered me. I couldn't help being impressed. If I had had any thought of ejecting her, bag and baggage, from my castle, it had been completely knocked out of my head and I was left, you might say, in a position which gave me no other alternative than to consider myself a humble instrument in the furthering of her ends, whether I would or no. It was most amazing. Superior to the feeling of scorn I naturally felt for her and her kind,—the fools who make international beds and find them filled with thorns,—there was the delicious sensation of being able to rise above my prejudices and become a willing conspirator against that despot, Common Sense.

She was very sure of herself, that was plain; and I am positive that she was equally sure of me. It isn't altogether flattering, either, to feel that a woman is so sure of you that there isn't any doubt concerning her estimate of your offensive strength. Somehow one feels an absence of physical attractiveness.

"Rosemary," I repeated. "And what am I to call you?"

"Even my enemies call me Countess," she said coldly.

"Oh," said I, more respectfully. "I see. When am I to have the pleasure of meeting the less particular Rosemary?"

"I didn't mean to be horrid," she said plaintively. "Please overlook it, Mr. Smart. If you are very, very quiet I think you may see her now. She is asleep."

"I may frighten her if she awakes," I said in haste, remembering my antipathy to babies.

Nevertheless I was led through a couple of bare, unfurnished rooms into a sunny, perfectly adorable nursery. A nursemaid,—English, at a glance,—arose from her seat in the window and held a cautious finger to her lips. In the middle of a bed that would have accommodated an entire family, was the sleeping Rosemary—a tiny, rosy-cheeked, yellow haired atom bounded on four sides by yards of mattress.

I stood over her timorously and stared. The Countess put one knee upon the mattress and, leaning far over, kissed a little paw. I blinked, like a confounded booby.

Then we stole out of the room.

"Isn't she adorable?" asked the Countess when we were at a safe distance.

"They all are," I said grudgingly, "when they're asleep."

"You are horrid!"

"By the way," I said sternly, "how does that bedstead happen to be a yard or so lower than any other bed in this entire castle? All the rest of them are so high one has to get into them from a chair."

"Oh," she said complacently, "it was too high for Blake to manage conveniently, so I had Rudolph saw the legs off short."

One of my very finest antique bedsteads! But I didn't even groan.

"You will let me stay on, won't you, Mr. Smart?" she said, when we were at the fireplace again. "I am really so helpless, you know."

I offered her everything that the castle afforded in the way of loyalty and luxury.

"And we'll have a telephone in the main hall before the end of a week," I concluded beamingly.

Her face clouded. "Oh, I'd much rather have it in my hallway, if you don't mind. You see, I can't very well go downstairs every time I want to use the 'phone, and it will be a nuisance sending for me when I'm wanted."

This was rather high-handed, I thought.

"But if no one knows you're here, it seems to me you're not likely to be called."

"You never can tell," she said mysteriously.

I promised to put the instrument in her hall, and not to have an extension to my rooms for fear of creating suspicion. Also the electric bell system was to be put in just as she wanted it to be. And a lot of other things that do not seem to come to mind at this moment.

I left in a daze at half-past three, to send Britton up with all the late novels and magazines, and a big box of my special cigarettes.



CHAPTER VI

I DISCUSS MATRIMONY

Poopendyke and I tried to do a little work that evening, but neither of us seemed quite capable of concentration. We said "I beg pardon" to each other a dozen times or more, following mental lapses, and then gave it up. My ideas failed in consecutiveness, and when I did succeed in hitching two intelligent thoughts together he invariably destroyed the sequence by compelling me to repeat myself, with the result that I became irascible.

We had gone over the events of the day very thoroughly. If anything, he was more alarmed over our predicament than I. He seemed to sense the danger that attended my decision to shelter and protect this cool-headed, rather self-centred young woman at the top of my castle. To me, it was something of a lark; to him, a tragedy. He takes everything seriously, so much so in fact that he gets on my nerves. I wish he were not always looking at things through the little end of the telescope. I like a change, and it is a novelty to sometimes see things through the big end, especially peril.

"They will yank us all up for aiding and abetting," he proclaimed, trying to focus his eyes on the shorthand book he was fumbling.

"You wouldn't have me turn her over to the law, would you?" I demanded crossly. "Please don't forget that we are Americans."

"I don't," said he. "That's what worries me most of all."

"Well," said I loftily, "we'll see."

We were silent for a long time.

"It must be horribly lonely and spooky away up there where she is," I said at last, inadvertently betraying my thoughts. He sniffed.

"Have you a cold?" I demanded, glaring at him.

"No," he said gloomily; "a presentiment."

"Umph!"

Another period of silence. Then: "I wonder if Max—" I stopped short.

"Yes, sir," he said, with wonderful divination. "He did."

"Any message?"

"She sent down word that the new cook is a jewel, but I think she must have been jesting. I've never cared for a man cook myself. I don't like to appear hypercritical, but what did you think of the dinner tonight, sir?"

"I've never tasted better broiled ham in my life, Mr. Poopendyke."

"Ham! That's it, Mr. Smart. But what I'd like to know is this:" What became of the grouse you ordered for dinner, sir? I happen to know that it was put over the fire at seven—"

"I sent it up to the countess, with our compliments," said I, peevishly. I think that remark silenced him. At any rate, he got up and left the room.

I laid awake half the night morbidly berating the American father who is so afraid of his wife that he lets her bully him into sacrificing their joint flesh and blood upon the altar of social ambition. She had said that her father was opposed to the match from the beginning. Then why, in the name of heaven, wasn't he man enough to put a stop to it? Why—But what use is there in applying whys to a man who doesn't know what God meant when He fashioned two sexes? I put him down as neutral and tried my best to forget him.

But I couldn't forget the daughter of this browbeaten American father. There was something singularly familiar about her exquisite face, a conviction on my part that is easily accounted for. Her portrait, of course, had been published far and wide at the time of the wedding; she must have been pictured from every conceivable angle, with illimitable gowns, hats, veils and parasols, and I certainly could not have missed seeing her, even with half an eye. But for the life of me, I couldn't connect her with any of the much-talked-of international marriages that came to mind as I lay there going over the meagre assortment I was able to recall. I went to sleep wondering whether Poopendyke's memory was any better than mine. He is tremendously interested in the financial doings of our country, being the possessor of a flourishing savings' account, and as he also possesses a lively sense of the ridiculous, it was not unreasonable to suspect that he might remember all the details of this particular transaction in stocks and bonds.

The next morning I set my labourers to work putting guest-rooms into shape for the coming of the Hazzards and the four friends who were to be with them for the week as my guests. They were to arrive on the next day but one, which gave me ample time to consult a furniture dealer. I would have to buy at least six new beds and everything else with which to comfortably equip as many bed-chambers, it being a foregone conclusion that not even the husbands and wives would condescend to "double up" to oblige me. The expensiveness of this ill-timed visit had not occurred to me at the outset. Still there was some prospect of getting the wholesale price. On one point I was determined; the workmen should not be laid off for a single hour, not even if my guests went off in a huff.

At twelve I climbed the tortuous stairs leading to the Countess's apartments. She opened the door herself in response to my rapping.

"I neglected to mention yesterday that I am expecting a houseful of guests in a day or two," I said, after she had given me a very cordial greeting.

"Guests?" she cried in dismay. "Oh, dear! Can't you put them off?"

"I have hopes that they won't be able to stand the workmen banging around all day," I confessed, somewhat guiltily.

"Women in the party?"

"Two, I believe. Both married and qualified to express opinions."

"They will be sure to nose me out," she said ruefully. "Women are dreadful nosers."

"Don't worry," I said. "We'll get a lot of new padlocks for the doors downstairs and you'll be as safe as can be, if you'll only keep quiet."

"But I don't see why I should be made to mope here all day and all night like a sick cat, holding my hand over Rosemary's mouth when she wants to cry, and muzzling poor Jinko so that he—"

"My dear Countess," I interrupted sternly, "you should not forget that these other guests of mine are invited here."

"But I was here first," she argued. "It is most annoying."

"I believe you said yesterday that you are in the habit of having your own way." She nodded her head. "Well, I am afraid you'll have to come down from your high horse—at least temporarily."

"Oh, I see. You—you mean to be very firm and domineering with me."

"You must try to see things from my point of—"

"Please don't say that!" she flared. "I'm so tired of hearing those words. For the last three years I've been commanded to see things from some one else's point of view, and I'm sick of the expression."

"For heaven's sake, don't put me in the same boat with your husband!"

She regarded me somewhat frigidly for a moment longer, and then a slow, witching smile crept into her eyes.

"I sha'n't," she promised, and laughed outright.

"Do forgive me, Mr. Smart. I am such a piggy thing. I'll try to be nice and sensible, and I will be as still as a mouse all the time they're here. But you must promise to come up every day and give me the gossip. You can steal up, can't you? Surreptitiously?"

"Clandestinely," I said, gravely.

"I really ought to warn you once more about getting yourself involved," she said pointedly.

"Oh, I'm quite a safe old party," I assured her. "They couldn't make capital of me."

"The grouse was delicious," she said, deliberately changing the subject. Nice divorcees are always doing that.

We fell into a discussion of present and future needs; of ways and means for keeping my friends utterly in the dark concerning her presence in the abandoned east wing; and of what we were pleased to allude to as "separate maintenance," employing a phrase that might have been considered distasteful and even banal under ordinary conditions.

"I've been trying to recall all of the notable marriages we had in New York three years ago," said I, after she had most engagingly reduced me to a state of subjection in the matter of three or four moot questions that came up for settlement. "You don't seem to fit in with any of the international affairs I can bring to mind."

"You promised you wouldn't bother about that, Mr. Smart," she said severely.

"Of course you were married in New York?"

"In a very nice church just off Fifth Avenue, if that will help you any," she said. "The usual crowd inside the church, and the usual mob outside, all fighting for a glimpse of me in my wedding shroud, and for a chance to see a real Hungarian nobleman. It really was a very magnificent wedding, Mr. Smart." She seemed to be unduly proud of the spectacular sacrifice.

A knitted brow revealed the obfuscated condition of my brain. I was thinking very intently, not to say remotely.

"The whole world talked about it," she went on dreamily. "We had a real prince for the best man, and two of the ushers couldn't speak a word of English. Don't you remember that the police closed the streets in the neighbourhood of the church and wouldn't let people spoil everything by going about their business as they were in the habit of doing? Some of the shops sold window space to sight-seers, just as they do at a coronation."

"I daresay all this should let in light, but it doesn't."

"Don't you read the newspapers?" she cried impatiently. She actually resented my ignorance.

"Religiously," I said, stung to revolt. "But I make it a point never to read the criminal news."

"Criminal news?" she gasped, a spot of red leaping to her cheek. "What do you mean?"

"It is merely my way of saying that I put marriages of that character in the category of crime."

"Oh!" she cried, staring at me with unbelieving eyes.

"Every time a sweet, lovely American girl is delivered into the hands of a foreign bounder who happens to possess a title that needs fixing, I call the transaction a crime that puts white slavery in a class with the most trifling misdemeanours. You did not love this pusillanimous Count, nor did he care a hang for you. You were too young in the ways of the world to have any feeling for him, and he was too old to have any for you. The whole hateful business therefore resolved itself into a case of give and take—and he took everything. He took you and your father's millions and now you are both back where you began. Some one deliberately committed a crime, and as it wasn't you or the Count, who levied his legitimate toll,—it must have been the person who planned the conspiracy. I take it, of course, that the whole affair was arranged behind your back, so to speak. To make it a perfectly fashionable and up-to-date delivery it would have been entirely out of place to consult the unsophisticated girl who was thrown in to make the title good. You were not sold to this bounder. It was the other way round. By the gods, madam, he was actually paid to take you!"

Her face was quite pale. Her eyes did not leave mine during the long and crazy diatribe,—of which I was already beginning to feel heartily ashamed,—and there was a dark, ominous fire in them that should have warned me.

She arose from her chair. It seemed to me she was taller than before.

"If nothing else came to me out of this transaction," she said levelly, "at least a certain amount of dignity was acquired. Pray remember that I am no longer the unsophisticated girl you so graciously describe. I am a woman, Mr. Smart."

"True," said I, senselessly dogged; "a woman with the power to think for yourself. That is my point. If the same situation arose at your present age, I fancy you'd be able to select a husband without assistance, and I venture to say you wouldn't pick up the first dissolute nobleman that came your way. No, my dear countess, you were not to blame. You thought, as your parents did, that marriage with a count would make a real countess of you. What rot! You are a simple, lovable American girl and that's all there ever can be to it. To the end of your days you will be an American. It is not within the powers of a scape-grace count to put you or any other American girl on a plane with the women who are born countesses, or duchesses, or anything of the sort. I don't say that you suffer by comparison with these noble ladies. As a matter of fact you are surpassingly finer in every way than ninety-nine per cent. of them,—poor things! Marrying an English duke doesn't make a genuine duchess out of an American girl, not by a long shot. She merely becomes a figure of speech. Your own experience should tell you that. Well, it's the same with all of them. They acquire a title, but not the homage that should go with it."

We were both standing now. She was still measuring me with somewhat incredulous eyes, rather more tolerant than resentful.

"Do you expect me to agree with you, Mr. Smart?" she asked.

"I do," said I, promptly. "You, of all people, should be able to testify that my views are absolutely right."

"They are right," she said, simply. "Still you are pretty much of a brute to insult me with them."

"I most sincerely crave your pardon, if it isn't too late," I cried, abject once more. (I don't know what gets into me once in a while.)

"The safest way, I should say, is for neither of us to express an opinion so long as we are thrown into contact with each other. If you choose to tell the world what you think of me, all well and good. But please don't tell me."

"I can't convince the world what I think of you for the simple reason that I'd be speaking at random. I don't know who you are."

"Oh, you will know some day," she said, and her shoulders drooped a little.

"I've—I've done a most cowardly, despicable thing in hunting you—"

"Please! Please don't say anything more about it. I dare say you've done me a lot of good. Perhaps I shall see things a little more clearly. To be perfectly honest with you, I went into this marriage with my you his queen? You'll find it better than being a countess, believe me."

"I shall never marry, Mr. Smart," she said with decision. "Never, never again will I get into a mess that is so hard to get out of. I can say this to you because I've heard you are a bachelor. You can't take offence."

"I fondly hope to die a bachelor," said I with humility.

"God bless you!" she cried, bursting into a merry laugh, and I knew that a truce had been declared for the time being at least. "And now let us talk sense. Have you carefully considered the consequences if you are found out, Mr. Smart?"

"Found out?"

"If you are caught shielding a fugitive from justice. I couldn't go to sleep for hours last night thinking of what might happen to you if—"

"Nonsense!" I cried, but for the life of me I couldn't help feeling elated. She had a soul above self, after all!

"You see, I am a thief and a robber and a very terrible malefactor, according to the reports Max brings over from the city. The fight for poor little Rosemary is destined to fill columns and columns in the newspapers of the two continents for months to come. You, Mr. Smart, may find yourself in the thick of it. If I were in your place, I should keep out of it."

"While I am not overjoyed by the prospect of being dragged into it, Countess, I certainly refuse to back out at this stage of the game. Moreover, you may rest assured that I shall not turn you out."

"It occurred to me last night that the safest thing for you to do, Mr. Smart, is to—to get out yourself."

I stared. She went on hurriedly: "Can't you go away for a month's visit or—"

"Well, upon my soul!" I gasped. "Would you turn me out of my own house? This beats anything I've—"

"I was only thinking of your peace of mind and your—your safety," she cried unhappily. "Truly, truly I was."

"Well, I prefer to stay here and do what little I can to shield you and Rosemary," said I sullenly.

"I'll not say anything horrid again, Mr. Smart," she said quite meekly. (I take this occasion to repeat that I've never seen any one in all my life so pretty as she!) Her moist red lip trembled slightly, like a censured child's.

At that instant there came a rapping on the door. I started apprehensively.

"It is only Max with the coal," she explained, with obvious relief. "We keep a fire going in the grate all day long. You've no idea how cold it is up here even on the hottest days. Come in!"

Max came near to dropping the scuttle when he saw me. He stood as one petrified.

"Don't mind Mr. Smart, Max," said she serenely. "He won't bite your head off."

The poor clumsy fellow spilled quantities of coal over the hearth when he attempted to replenish the fire at her command, and moved with greater celerity in making his escape from the room than I had ever known him to exercise before. Somehow I began to regain a lost feeling of confidence in myself. The confounded Schmicks, big and little, were afraid of me, after all.

"By the way," she said, after we had lighted our cigarettes, "I am nearly out of these." I liked the way she held the match for me, and then flicked it snappily into the centre of a pile of cushions six feet from the fireplace.

I made a mental note of the shortage and then admiringly said that I didn't see how any man, even a count could help adoring a woman who held a cigarette to her lips as she did.

"Oh," said she coolly, "his friends were willing worshippers, all of them. There wasn't a man among them who failed to make violent love to me, and with the Count's permission at that. You must not look so shocked. I managed to keep them at a safe distance. My unreasonable attitude toward them used to annoy my husband intensely."

"Good Lord!"

"Pooh! He didn't care what became of me. There was one particular man whom he favoured the most. A dreadful man! We quarrelled bitterly when I declared that either he or I would have to leave the house—forever. I don't mind confessing to you that the man I speak of is your friend, the gentle Count Hohendahl, some time ogre of this castle."

I shuddered. A feeling of utter loathing for all these unprincipled scoundrels came over me, and I mildly took the name of the Lord in vain.

With an abrupt change of manner, she arose from her chair and began to pace the floor, distractedly beating her clinched hands against her bosom. Twice I heard her murmur: "Oh, God!"

This startling exposition of feeling gave me a most uncanny shock. It came out of a clear sky, so to say, at a moment when I was beginning to regard her as cold-blooded, callous, and utterly without the emotions supposed to exist in the breast of every high-minded woman. And now I was witness to the pain she suffered, now I heard her cry out against the thing that had hurt her so pitilessly. I turned my head away, vastly moved. Presently she moved over to the window. A covert glance revealed her standing there, looking not down at the Danube that seemed so far away but up at the blue sky that seemed so near.

I sat very still and repressed, trying to remember the harsh, unkind things I had said to her, and berating myself fiercely for all of them. What a stupid, vainglorious ass I was, not to have divined something of the inward fight she was making to conquer the emotions that filled her heart unto the bursting point.

The sound of dry, suppressed sobs came to my ears. It was too much for me. I stealthily quit my position by the mantel-piece and tip-toed toward the door, bent on leaving her alone. Half-way there I hesitated, stopped and then deliberately returned to the fireplace, where I noisily shuffled a fresh supply of coals into the grate. It would be heartless, even unmannerly, to leave her without letting her know that I was heartily ashamed of myself and completely in sympathy with her. Wisely, however, I resolved to let her have her cry out. Some one a great deal more far-seeing than I let the world into a most important secret when he advised man to take that course when in doubt.

For a long while I waited for her to regain control of herself, rather dreading the apology she would feel called upon to make for her abrupt reversion to the first principles of her sex. The sobs ceased entirely. I experienced the sharp joy of relaxation. Her dainty lace handkerchief found employment. First she would dab it cautiously in one eye, then the other, after which she would scrutinise its crumpled surface with most extraordinary interest. At least a dozen times she repeated this puzzling operation. What in the world was she looking for? To this day, that strange, sly peeking on her part remains a mystery to me.

She turned swiftly upon me and beckoned with her little forefinger. Greatly concerned, I sprang toward her. Was she preparing to swoon? What in heaven's name was I to do if she took it into her pretty head to do such a thing as that? Involuntarily I shot a quick look at her blouse. To my horror it was buttoned down the back. It would be a bachelor's luck to—But she was smiling radiantly. Saved!

"Look!" she cried, pointing upward through the window. "Isn't she lovely?"

I stopped short in my tracks and stared at her in blank amazement. What a stupefying creature she was!

She beckoned again, impatiently. I obeyed with alacrity. Obtaining a rather clear view of her eyes, I was considerably surprised to find no trace of departed tears. Her cheek was as smooth and creamy white as it had been before the deluge. Her eyelids were dry and orderly and her nose had not been blown once to my recollection. Truly, it was a marvellous recovery. I still wonder.

The cause of her excitement was visible at a glance. A trim nurse-maid stood in the small gallery which circled the top of the turret, just above and to the right of us. She held in her arms the pink-hooded, pink-coated Rosemary, made snug against the chill winds of her lofty parade ground. Her yellow curls peeped out from beneath the lace of the hood, and her round little cheeks were the colour of the peach's bloom.

"Now, isn't she lovely?" cried my eager companion.

"Even a crusty bachelor can see that she is adorable."

"I am not a crusty bachelor," I protested indignantly, "and what's more, I am positive I should like to kiss those red little cheeks, which is saying a great deal for me. I've never voluntarily kissed a baby in my life."

"I do not approve of the baby-kissing custom," she said severely. "It is extremely unhealthy and—middle-class. Still," seeing my expression change, "I sha'n't mind your kissing her once."

"Thanks," said I humbly.

It was plain to be seen that she did not intend to refer to the recent outburst. Superb exposition of tact!

Catching the nurse's eye, she signalled for her to bring the child down to us. Rosemary took to me at once. A most embarrassing thing happened. On seeing me she held out her chubby arms and shouted "da-da!" at the top of her infantile lungs. That had never happened to me before.

I flushed and the Countess shrieked with laughter. It wouldn't have been so bad if the nurse had known her place. If there is one thing in this world that I hate with fervour, it is an ill-mannered, poorly-trained servant. A grinning nurse-maid is the worst of all. I may be super-sensitive and crotchety about such things, but I can see no excuse for keeping a servant—especially a nurse-maid—who laughs at everything that's said by her superiors, even though the quip may be no more side-splitting than a two syllabled "da-da."

"Ha, ha!" I laughed bravely. "She—she evidently thinks I look like the Count. He is very handsome, you say."

"Oh, that isn't it," cried the Countess, taking Rosemary in her arms and directing me to a spot on her rosy cheek. "Kiss right there, Mr. Smart. There! Wasn't it a nice kiss, honey-bunch? If you are a very, very nice little girl the kind gentleman will kiss you on the other cheek some day. She calls every man she meets da-da," explained the radiant young mother. "She's awfully European in her habits, you see. You need not feel flattered. She calls Conrad and Rudolph and Max da-da, and this morning in the back window she applied the same handsome compliment to your Mr. Poopendyke."

"Oh," said I, rather more crestfallen than relieved.

"Would you like to hold her, Mr. Smart? She's such a darling to hold."

"No—no, thank you," I cried, backing off.

"Oh, you will come to it, never fear," she said gaily, as she restored Rosemary to the nurse's arms. "Won't he, Blake?"

"He will, my lady," said Blake with conviction. I noticed this time that Blake's smile wasn't half bad.

At that instant Jinko, the chow, pushed the door open with his black nose and strolled imposingly into the room. He proceeded to treat me in the most cavalier fashion by bristling and growling.

The Countess opened her eyes very wide.

"Dear me," she sighed, "you must be very like the Count, after all. Jinko never growls at any one but him."

* * * * *

At dinner that evening I asked Poopendyke point blank if he could call to mind a marriage in New York society that might fit the principals in this puzzling case.

He hemmed and hawed and appeared to be greatly confused.

"Really, sir, I—I—really, I—"

"You make it a point to read all of the society news," I explained; "and you are a great hand for remembering names and faces. Think hard."

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Smart, I do remember this particular marriage very clearly," said he, looking down at his plate.

"You do?" I shouted eagerly. The new footman stared. "Splendid! Tell me, who is she—or was she?"

My secretary looked me steadily in the eye.

"I'm sorry, sir, but—but I can't do it. I promised her this morning I wouldn't let it be dragged out of me with red hot tongs."



CHAPTER VII

I RECEIVE VISITORS

She was indeed attended by faithful slaves.

* * * * * * * *

The east wing of the castle was as still as a mouse on the day my house party arrived. Grim old doors took on new padlocks, keyholes were carefully stopped up; creaking floors were calked; windows were picketed by uncompromising articles of furniture deployed to keep my ruthless refugee from adventuring too close to the danger zone; and adamantine instructions were served out to all of my vassals. Everything appeared to be in tip-top shape for the experiment in stealth.

And yet I trembled. My secret seemed to be safely planted, but what would the harvest be? I knew I should watch those upper windows with hypnotic zeal, and listen with straining ears for the inevitable squall of a child or the bark of a dog. My brain ran riot with incipient subterfuges, excuses, apologies and lies with which my position was to be sustained.

There would not be a minute during the week to come when I would be perfectly free to call my soul my own, and as for nerves! well, with good luck they might endure the strain. Popping up in bed out of a sound sleep at the slightest disturbance, with ears wide open and nerves tingling, was to be a nightly occupation at uncertain intervals; that was plain to be seen. All day long I would be shivering with anxiety and praying for night to come so that I might lie awake and pray for the sun to rise, and in this way pass the time as quickly as possible. There would be difficulty in getting my visitors to bed early, another thing to test my power at conniving. They were bridge players, of course, and as such would be up till all hours of the morning overdoing themselves in the effort to read each other's thoughts.

I thanked the Lord that my electric lighting system would not be installed until after they had departed. Ordinarily the Lord isn't thanked when an electric light company fails to perform its work on schedule time, but in this case delay was courted.

We were all somewhat surprised and not a little disorganised by the appearance of four unexpected servants in the train of my party. We hadn't counted on anything quite so elaborate. There were two lady's maids, not on friendly terms with each other; a French valet who had the air of one used to being served on a tray outside the servants' quarters; and a German attendant with hands constructed especially for the purpose of kneading and gouging the innermost muscles of his master, who it appears had to be kneaded and gouged three times a day by a masseur in order to stave off paralysis, locomotor ataxia or something equally unwelcome to a high liver.

We had ample room for all this physical increase, but no beds. I transferred the problem to Poopendyke. How he solved it I do not know, but from the woe-be-gone expression on his face the morning after the first night, and the fact that Britton was unnecessarily rough in shaving me, I gathered that the two of them had slept on a pile of rugs in the lower hall.

Elsie Hazzard presented me to her friends and, with lordly generosity, I presented the castle to them. Her husband, Dr. George, thanked me for saving all their lives and then, feeling a draft, turned up his coat collar and informed me that we'd all die if I didn't have the cracks stopped up. He seemed unnecessarily testy about it.

There was a Russian baron (the man who had to be kneaded) the last syllable of whose name was vitch, the first five evading me in a perpetual chase up and down the alphabet. For brevity's sake, I'll call him Umovitch. The French valet's master was a Viennese gentleman of twenty-six or eight (I heard), but who looked forty. I found myself wondering how dear, puritanic, little Elsie Hazzard could have fallen in with two such unamiable wrecks as these fellows appeared to be at first sight.

The Austrian's name was Pless. He was a plain mister. The more I saw of him the first afternoon the more I wondered at George Hazzard's carelessness. Then there were two very bright and charming Americans, the Billy Smiths. He was connected with the American Embassy at Vienna, and I liked him from the start. You could tell that he was the sort of a chap who is bound to get on in the world by simply looking at his wife. The man who could win the love and support of such an attractive creature must of necessity have qualifications to spare. She was very beautiful and very clever. Somehow the unforgetable resplendency of my erstwhile typist (who married the jeweller's clerk) faded into a pale, ineffective drab when opposed to the charms of Mrs. Betty Billy Smith. (They all called her Betty Billy.)

After luncheon I got Elsie off in a corner and plied her with questions concerning her friends. The Billy Smiths were easily accounted for. They belonged to the most exclusive set in New York and Newport. He had an incomprehensible lot of money and a taste for the diplomatic service. Some day he would be an Ambassador. The Baron was in the Russian Embassy and was really a very nice boy.