ounter," he said. "She's pretty and she's clever, and she's made
fools of better men than you, my boy. I don't say she's a bad lot,
because she's too smart for that. But I will say that a dozen men are in
love with her to-day. I suppose you'll say that she can't help that. I'm
only warning you on the presumption that they don't seem to be able to
help it, either. Remember, my boy, you are going out there to offset,
not to beset, Lady Deppingham."

Chase learned more of the attractive Lady Agnes and her court before he
left England. Common report credited her with being dangerously pretty,
scandalously unwise, eminently virtuous, distractingly adventurous in
the search for pleasure, charmingly unscrupulous in her treatment of
men's hearts, but withal, sufficiently clever to dodge the consequences
of her widespread though gentle iniquities. He was quite prepared to
admire her, and yet equally resolved to avoid her. Something told him
that he was not of the age and valor of St. Anthony. He went out to
Japat with a stern resolution to lead himself not into temptation; to
steer clear of the highway of roses and stick close to the thorny paths
below. Besides, he felt that he deserved some sort of punishment for
looking so high in the Duchy of Rapp-Thorberg.

Not that he was in love with the proud Princess Genevra; he denied that
to himself a hundred times a day as he sat in his bungalow and smoked
the situation over.

He had proved to himself, quite beyond a doubt, that he was not in love,
when, like a bolt from a clear sky, she stepped out of the oblivion into
which he had cast her, to smile upon him without warning. It was most
unfair. Her smile had been one of the most difficult obstacles to
overcome in the effort to return a fair and final verdict.

As he sat in the shade of his bungalow porch on the afternoon of her
arrival, he lamented that every argument he had presented in the cause
of common sense had been knocked into a cocked hat by that electric
smile. Could anything be more miraculous than that she should come to
the unheard-of island of Japat--unless, possibly, that he should be
there when she came? She was there for him to look upon and love and
lose, just as he had dreamed all these months. It mattered little that
she was now the wife of Prince Karl of Brabetz; to him she was still the
Princess Genevra of Rapp-Thorberg.

If he had ever hoped that she might be more to him than an unattainable
divinity, he