, stood up, and
then sat down again.

Aribert looked at Racksole, and they both looked at Prince Eugen. The
latter's face was flushed, and Racksole observed that the left pupil was
more dilated than the right. The man started, muttered odd, fragmentary
scraps of sentences, now grumbling, now whining.

'His mind is unhinged,' Racksole whispered in English.

'Hush!' said Prince Aribert. 'He understands English.' But Prince Eugen
took no notice of the brief colloquy.

'We had better get him upstairs, somehow,' said Racksole.

'Yes,' Aribert assented. 'Eugen, the lady with the red hat, the lady you
are waiting for, is upstairs. She has sent us down to ask you to come
up. Won't you come?'

'Himmel!' the poor fellow exclaimed, with a kind of weak anger. 'Why did
you not say this before?'

He rose, staggered towards Aribert, and fell headlong on the floor. He
had swooned. The two men raised him, carried him up the stone steps, and
laid him with infinite care on a sofa. He lay, breathing queerly through
the nostrils, his eyes closed, his fingers contracted; every now and
then a convulsion ran through his frame.

'One of us must fetch a doctor,' said Prince Aribert.

'I will,' said Racksole. At that moment there was a quick, curt rap
on the french window, and both Racksole and the Prince glanced round
startled. A girl's face was pressed against the large window-pane. It
was Nella's.

Racksole unfastened the catch, and she entered.

'I have found you,' she said lightly; 'you might have told me. I
couldn't sleep. I inquired from the hotel-folks if you had retired,
and they said no; so I slipped out. I guessed where you were.' Racksole
interrupted her with a question as to what she meant by this escapade,
but she stopped him with a careless gesture. What's this?' She pointed
to the form on the sofa.

'That is my nephew, Prince Eugen,' said Aribert.

'Hurt?' she inquired coldly. 'I hope not.'

'He is ill,' said Racksole, 'his brain is turned.'

Nella began to examine the unconscious Prince with the expert movements
of a girl who had passed through the best hospital course to be obtained
in New York.

'He has got brain fever,' she said. 'That is all, but it will be enough.
Do you know if there is a bed anywhere in this remarkable house?'

Chapter Eighteen IN THE NIGHT-TIME

'HE must on no account be moved,' said the dark little Belgian doctor,
whose eyes seemed to peer so quizzically through his spectacle