e street. Then they passed out, not
without, it must be admitted, an envious glance at the collection of
jewels on the table.

As the door closed behind them, her Serene Highness turned toward Nita,
as she relaxed in the chair by the dressing-table.

"You may dress my hair, child. I wonder how the door was broken?"

"Ah, madame," was the guileless response. "_Quien sabe?_"

VI

OVER THE SEA AND FAR AWAY

That journey to the _Mauretania_ was never to be forgotten by Warren
Jarvis; and yet so weird, bruising, jumbling, and altogether horrible
was it, that he could never distinctly remember its details.

With hands stretched tensely against the corners of the trunk, he
warded off as best he could the shocks of the skilled baggage-breakers
along the route. Again and again, an unexpected twist would bang his
throbbing head against the adamantine sides, and with a wince, a sharp,
in-drawn breath, he would hold himself "together" for one more bump!

The air was stifling; yet the foresight of cutting the holes gave him
enough oxygen to maintain his senses. At last, after aeons of suffering
which reminded him of nothing so much as his initiation into the
college fraternity, he felt himself being dragged up the side of the
great ocean greyhound.

More jolts, more rolls and bangs, and at last, with muscles wrenched, a
swollen forehead and nerves aquiver, there was rest.

"I'm in her cabin at last--and now for a graceful exit!" he told
himself, with an enforced jocularity. But this was no easy task. He
spent a full half-hour, working and prying with the shears against the
lock which imprisoned him with indomitable force from the outside of
the iron-and-leathern prison.

Upon the outer deck of the great turbiner, the Princess nervously
fought her way through the great throng of voyagers and their friends.
Nita was close by her side. It seemed impossible to capture a steward
who was not busy with the bearing of bouquets and wine baskets. In
other circumstances this young personage would have been furious at the
lack of respect which she had been educated to expect from the throngs
of her own country.

But to-day her only anxiety was to find her elusive quarters for the
strange cruise, to learn whether or not her new knight-errant were
alive or dead from the rigors of his escape.

At last, with the aid of an extravagant _largesse_, she was conducted
to her staterooms.

As she entered the parlor of her luxurio