ill be left--I, Rupert Hentzau, and you, the King of Ruritania."

He paused, and then, in a voice that quivered with eagerness, added:

"Isn't that a hand to play?--a throne and your princess! And for me, say
a competence and your Majesty's gratitude."

"Surely," I exclaimed, "while you're above ground, hell wants its
master!"

"Well, think it over," he said. "And, look you, it would take more than
a scruple or two to keep me from yonder girl," and his evil eye flashed
again at her I loved.

"Get out of my reach!" said I; and yet in a moment I began to laugh for
the very audacity of it.

"Would you turn against your master?" I asked.

He swore at Michael for being what the offspring of a legal, though
morganatic, union should not be called, and said to me in an almost
confidential and apparently friendly tone:

"He gets in my way, you know. He's a jealous brute! Faith, I nearly
stuck a knife into him last night; he came most cursedly _mal a propos_!"

My temper was well under control now; I was learning something.

"A lady?" I asked negligently.

"Ay, and a beauty," he nodded. "But you've seen her."

"Ah! was it at a tea-party, when some of your friends got on the wrong
side of the table?"

"What can you expect of fools like Detchard and De Gautet? I wish I'd
been there."

"And the duke interferes?"

"Well," said Rupert meditatively, "that's hardly a fair way of putting
it, perhaps. I want to interfere."

"And she prefers the duke?"

"Ay, the silly creature! Ah, well, you think about my plan," and, with a
bow, he pricked his horse and trotted after the body of his friend.

I went back to Flavia and Sapt, pondering on the strangeness of the man.
Wicked men I have known in plenty, but Rupert Hentzau remains unique in
my experience. And if there be another anywhere, let him be caught and
hanged out of hand. So say I!

"He's very handsome, isn't he?" said Flavia.

Well, of course, she didn't know him as I did; yet I was put out, for I
thought his bold glances would have made her angry. But my dear Flavia
was a woman, and so--she was not put out. On the contrary, she thought
young Rupert very handsome--as, beyond question, the ruffian was.

"And how sad he looked at his friend's death!" said she.

"He'll have better reason to be sad at his own," observed Sapt, with a
grim smile.

As for me, I grew sulky; unreasonable it was perhaps, for what better
business had I to look at her with love than had