Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted to
know what was in his companion's mind.

"What do you mean by exalted?" he asked, with a smile of faint
amusement.

"Well--equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public eye."

Lansing still smiled. "The question is, I suppose, whether her desire to
shine equals her capacity."

The aide-de-camp stared. "You mean, she's not ambitious?"

"On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious."

"Immeasurably?" The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it. "But not,
surely, beyond--beyond what we can offer," his eyes completed the
sentence; and it was Lansing's turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced the
stare. "Yes," his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall:
"The Princess Mother admires her immensely." But at that moment a wave
of Mrs. Hicks's fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.

"Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the difference
between the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but the
Manager has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris have
arrived, and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and
take a peep at them.... She's sure the Professor will understand...."

"And accompany us, of course," the Princess irresistibly added.

Lansing's brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted the
scales from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been flooded
with light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp's: things he
had heard, hints he had let pass, smiles, insinuations, cordialities,
rumours of the improbability of the Prince's founding a family,
suggestions as to the urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburger
treasury....

Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princely
guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took little
interest in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from the
party, absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled but
smiling savant who was to have enlightened the party on the difference
between Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.

Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observe
the girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centre
of all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she was
growing handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massive
lines instead of trying to disguise th