"I suppose you might marry. There must be lots of
wealthy girls who would like to be called queen."

The King leaned forward and smacked Gorman heartily on the knee.

"You have hit the business end of the nail," he said. "I am ready. I
shall marry. Produce the lady, or, as you say in England, cough her
up."

Gorman had not expected this prompt and enthusiastic approval of his
suggestion. He had not a list of heiresses in his pocket.

"But," he said, "there's Madame Ypsilante."

"Corinne is reasonable," said the King. "I should not, of course, show
my cold shoulder to Corinne. She would share the loot. She and I
together."

Gorman knew that the King was a blackguard entirely without principle
or honour; but this proposal startled him.

"I have it," said the King. "Something has happened--no, occurred to
me. There is in this hotel at this moment an American, an oof-bird, a
king of dollars."

"Donovan?"

Gorman knew Donovan pretty well; as indeed he knew all wealthy
Irish-Americans. It was Gorman's business to cross the Atlantic from
time to time to get money for the support of the Irish Party. Donovan
had been for many years a generous subscriber to these funds.

"There is a daughter," said the King. "I have not put eyes on her. She
may be--but it does not matter what she is, not a curse, not a damn
from the Continent. I shall still have Corinne. The American oof-girl
may have the eyes of a pig. I do not care."

It is not easy to shock Gorman. Indeed, I should have said beforehand
that it was impossible to shock him. But I have his assurance that
Konrad Karl did it. It is true that Gorman himself had suggested
marriage to the King as a way out of his difficulties. But marriage
with an unnamed and unknown heiress is one thing. The King's plan,
frankly worked out, for insulting and robbing a girl whom Gorman knew
personally was quite a different matter. Miss Daisy Donovan is a
bright-faced, clear-eyed, romantic-souled girl. She had finished her
course of study in one of the universities of the Middle-west without
becoming a cultivated prig. In spite of the fact that history,
economics, emasculated philosophy and a kind of intellectual
complexion cream called literature had been smeared all over her by
earnest professors, she had never learned to take herself, life or
society at all seriously. She had all the vitality which gives
American women their singular charm and none of the appalling
earnestness of hig