l fall heavily. Crazed by what she considers her
people's wrongs following upon the coming of the stranger sovereign,
the poor creature must have developed the primitive instincts of
your race. Before coming to this country my servant had never heard
of murder save as a superseded custom of antiquity, like the
crucifying of lions. Her discovery of your daily practice of murder,
and of murder practised as a cure for crime--"

"Sir," began the lawyer imposingly.

"--wakened in her the primitive instincts of humanity, and her
instinct took the deplorable and fanatic form of your own courts,"
finished the prince. "Her bitterness toward his Majesty she sought
to visit upon his daughter."

Olivia sprang to her feet.

"I must go to my father. I must go to Yaque," she cried ringingly.
"Prince Tabnit, will you take me to him?"

Into the prince's face leaped a fire of admiration for her beauty
and her daring. He bowed before her, his lowered lashes making thick
shadows on his dark cheeks.

"I insist upon this," cried little Olivia firmly, "and if you do not
permit it, Prince Tabnit, we must publish what you have told us
from one end of the city to the other."

"Yes, by Jove," thought St. George, "and one's country will have a
Yaque exhibit in its own department at the next world's fair."

"Olivia! My child! Miss Holland--," began the lawyer.

The prince spoke tranquilly.

"It is precisely this errand," he said, "that has brought me to
America. Do you not see that, in the event of your father's failure
to return to his people, you will eventually be Queen of Yaque?"

St. George found himself looking fixedly at Mrs. Hastings' false
front as the only reality in the room. If in a minute Rollo was
going to waken him by bringing in his coffee, he was going to
throttle Rollo--that was all. Olivia Holland, an American heiress,
the hereditary princess of a cannibal island! St. George still
insisted upon the cannibal; it somehow gave him a foothold among the
actualities.

"I!" cried Olivia.

Mrs. Hastings, brows lifted, lips parted, winked with lightning
rapidity in an effort to understand.

St. George pulled himself together.

"Your Highness," he said sternly, "there are several things upon
which I must ask you to enlighten us. And the first, which I hope
you will forgive, is whether you have any direct proof that what
you tell us of Miss Holland's father is true."

"That's it! That's it!" Mr. Frothingham joined him