ut you
can not come back. You have decided? Yes? Then good morning." Thirteen
years, thirteen years! He had sacrificed the freedom of the house and
the key to the purse, the kind eyes and the warm pressure of that old
hand. And for what? Starvation in the deserts, plenty of scars and
little of thanks, ingratitude and forgetfulness.

And now the kind eyes were closed and the warm hand cold. O, to recall
the vanished face, the silent voice, the misspent years, the April days
and their illusions! The Englishman took the monocle from his eye and
looked at it, wondering what had caused the sudden blur.

"There was a fine old man there in the bygone days," said Johann.

"And who was he?"

"Lord Fitzgerald, the British minister. He and Leopold were close
friends." Johann's investigating gaze went unrewarded. The Englishman's
face had resumed its expression of mild curiosity.

"Ah; a compatriot of mine," he said. Inwardly he mused: "This guide is
watching me; let him catch me if he can. His duchess? I know far too
much of her!"

"He was a millionaire, too," went on Johann.

"Well, we can't all be rich. Come."

They crossed the Strasse and traversed the walk at the side of the
palace enclosures. The Englishman aimlessly trailed his cane along the
green pickets of the fence till they ended in a stone arch which rose
high over the driveway. The gates were open, and coming toward the two
wanderers as they stood at the curb rolled the royal barouche, on
each side of which rode a mounted cuirassier, sashed and helmeted. The
Englishman, however, had observed nothing; he was lost in some dream.

"Look, Herr!" cried Johann, rousing the other by a pull at the sleeve.
"Look!" Socialist though he claimed to be, Johann touched his cap.

In the barouche, leaning back among the black velvet cushions, her face
mellowed by the shade of a small parasol, was a young woman of nineteen
or twenty, as beautiful as a da Vinci freshly conceived. The Englishman
saw a pair of grave dark eyes which, in the passing, met his and held
them. He caught his breath.

"Who is that?" he asked.

"That is her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Alexia."

Afterward the Englishman remembered seeing a white dog lying on the
opposite seat.

CHAPTER IV. AN ADVENTURE WITH ROYALTY

Maurice Carewe, attached to the American legation in Vienna, leaned
against the stone parapet which separated the terraced promenade of the
Continental Hotel from the Wert