artled--only I hope that he will be
merciful to our ignorance and not frighten us too much."

"I can assure you, Miss Marmion, that my good friend from Egypt will be
discretion itself," replied the Prince, with a look and a courtly
gesture that inspired Commander Merrill with an almost passionate
longing to take him down one of the quiet paths under the beeches for a
ten minutes' interlude. "I can promise that he will show you some
marvels which even your learned and distinguished father and his
_confreres_ may find difficult of explanation: but it shall all be white
magic. I understand that your real adept considers the black variety as
what you call bad form."

As the company rose and went in little groups towards the tennis-lawn,
where Phadrig had elected to display his powers, the three Professors
instinctively joined each other in a small phalanx of scepticism. If
there was any trick or deception to be discovered all looked to them to
do it, and they were almost gleefully aware of their responsibility.
Figuratively speaking, they each wore the scalps of many spiritualistic
mediums, and both Professor van Huysman and Professor Hartley sensed a
possible addition to their belts of scientific wampum which would not be
the least of their trophies. It had been agreed to by Phadrig, with a
quiet scorn, that they were to take any measures they liked to detect
him in any practice that would convict him of being merely a conjurer;
and they had accepted the permission with that whole-souled devotion to
truth which excludes all idea of pity from the really scientific mind.
Franklin Marmion was naturally in a very different frame of mind,
although, from reasons of high policy, he assumed a similar mask of
almost scornful scepticism; but for all that he was by far the most
anxious man in the company.

At the request of their hostess the guests arranged themselves sitting
and standing in a spacious circle on the tennis-lawn; and when this was,
formed, Phadrig, whose isolation so far from the rest of the company had
been satisfactorily explained by the Prince, walked slowly into the
middle of it, and, after a quick, keen glance round him--a glance which
rested for just a moment or so on Professor Marmion and his _confreres_,
and then on Nitocris, who was sitting beside Brenda attended by Lord
Leighton and Merrill--he said in a low but clear and far-reaching voice,
and in perfect English:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have come to