st an excuse," she said pettishly. "You don't want to do
anything. Why, you might become an ambassador!"

"I don't think I want to be an ambassador," said I.

"It's more than you ever will be," she retorted.

That is very likely true, but it is not more than I have been.

The idea of being an ambassador could scarcely dazzle me. I had been a
king!

So pretty Rose left us in dudgeon; and Burlesdon, lighting a cigarette,
looked at me still with that curious gaze.

"That picture in the paper--" he said.

"Well, what of it? It shows that the King of Ruritania and your humble
servant are as like as two peas."

My brother shook his head.

"I suppose so," he said. "But I should know you from the man in the
photograph."

"And not from the picture in the paper?"

"I should know the photograph from the picture: the picture's very like
the photograph, but--"

"Well?"

"It's more like you!" said my brother.

My brother is a good man and true--so that, for all that he is a married
man and mighty fond of his wife, he should know any secret of mine. But
this secret was not mine, and I could not tell it to him.

"I don't think it's so much like me as the photograph," said I boldly.
"But, anyhow, Bob, I won't go to Strelsau."

"No, don't go to Strelsau, Rudolf," said he.

And whether he suspects anything, or has a glimmer of the truth, I do
not know. If he has, he keeps it to himself, and he and I never refer to
it. And we let Sir Jacob Borrodaile find another attache.

Since all these events whose history I have set down happened I have
lived a very quiet life at a small house which I have taken in the
country. The ordinary ambitions and aims of men in my position seem to
me dull and unattractive. I have little fancy for the whirl of society,
and none for the jostle of politics. Lady Burlesdon utterly despairs of
me; my neighbours think me an indolent, dreamy, unsociable fellow. Yet
I am a young man; and sometimes I have a fancy--the superstitious would
call it a presentiment--that my part in life is not yet altogether
played; that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs,
I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my
enemies', brace my muscles to fight a good fight and strike stout blows.
Such is the tissue of my thoughts as, with gun or rod in hand, I wander
through the woods or by the side of the stream. Whether the fancy will
be fulfilled, I cannot tell--still less whe