gain to her Minister. "There was a man with him. He
presented him as Herr Casper Haupt, who the General said was connected
with the Russian Consulate here. He did not say in what capacity."

Sobieska aimlessly turned and returned a fork lying before him.

"No?" he inquired listlessly; then he repeated the question more
indifferently, "No?" He permitted a distant shadow of a smile to cross
his face as he looked up. "He didn't tell you, for instance, that Herr
Casper Haupt is the Chief of Imperial Secret Police for the district
embracing Poland, Krovitch, Austria and France; a very important
personage? What did Vladimar have to say?"

"When I told him I was on a shopping tour, he looked the usual masculine
horror and gave the usual masculine prayer for deliverance. He jokingly
suggested that I was going to purchase a trousseau." Her cheeks took a
faint color from her remark. "When he saw my suite--though he didn't
think I noticed it--his face stiffened a trifle and his tone was a
trifle less cordial. He remarked dryly we must be shopping for an army.
He became very anxious to learn my stopping-place that he might call, as
an old neighbor. I told him that I had determined, as yet, neither where
I would stay permanently, nor how long I would be in Paris, and he had
to be content with that."

Sobieska nodded his approval and laid down his fork.

"Such neighbors become more dangerous the older they grow. We will have
to keep a lookout for General Alexis Vladimar. He suspects something."

"He made no attempt to follow us," replied Trusia. "I watched. He
appeared to have forgotten our existence."

"He is a clever man, that Vladimar," said Sobieska grudgingly. "He has
not forgotten. Perhaps he is so sure of finding you when he wants to
that he is not giving himself any trouble. Fortunately we leave
to-morrow morning and will give him the slip, for all his cleverness."

Trusia now turned to Carter, and with fine free friendliness asked him
of his journey and if it had seemed long.

"Yes, it did," he admitted, but he did not say it was because it took
him from her.

"Now, isn't that odd," she laughed, "a journey home seems always the
longest to me; no train can get me there quickly enough," she added with
an extra note of tender patriotism.

When dinner was spread, Trusia seemed pale and depressed as though the
anticipated meeting with her unknown fiance was not fraught with joy.
Rallying herself, however, she was soon