ch were included in the packet sent from the Azores by
his Majesty. You have, for example, a tapestry representing an ibis
hunt; you have an image in pink sutro, or soft marble, of an ancient
Phoenician god--Melkarth. And you have a length of stained glass
bearing the figure of the Tyrian sphinx, crucified, and surrounded
by coiled asps."

"Yes, it is true," said Olivia, "we have all these things."

"Why, the trash must be quite expensive," observed Mrs. Hastings. "I
don't care much for so many colours myself, perhaps because I always
wear black; though I did wear light colours a good deal when I was a
girl."

"What else, Mr. St. George?" inquired the prince pleasantly.

"Nothing else," cried Olivia passionately. "I am satisfied. My
father is in danger, and I believe that he is in Yaque, for he would
never of his own will desert a place of trust. I must go to him.
And, Aunt Dora, you and Mr. Frothingham must go with me."

"Oh, Olivia!" wailed Mrs. Hastings, a different key for every
syllable, "think--consider! Is it the necessary thing to do? And
what would your poor dear uncle have done? And is there a better way
than his way? For I always say that it is not really necessary to do
as my poor dear husband would have done, providing only that we can
find a better way. Oh," she mourned, lifting her hands, "that this
frightful thing should come to me at my age. Otho may be married to
a cannibal princess, with his sons catching wild goats by the hair
like Tennyson and the whistling parrots--"

"Madame," said the prince coldly, "forgets what I have been saying
of my country."

"I do not forget," declared Mrs. Hastings sharply, "but being behind
civilization and being ahead of civilization comes to the same thing
more than once. In morals it does."

St. George was silent. Olivia's splendid daring in her passionate
decision to go to her father stirred him powerfully; moreover, her
words outlined a possible course of his own whose magnitude startled
him, and at the same time filled him with a sudden, dazzling hope.

"But where is your island, Prince Tabnit?" he asked. "You've
naturally no consul there and no cable, since you are not even on
the map."

"Yaque," said the prince readily, "lies almost due southwest from
the Azores."

Mr. Frothingham stirred skeptically.

"But such an island," he said pompously, "so rich in material for
the archaeologist, the anthropologist, the explorer in all fields of
antiquity--