ory of music, written dozens of things for the
orchestra, plays the pipe organ in the cathedral--all that sort of rot,
you know. He's a confounded little bounder, just the same. He's mad
about music and women and don't care a hang about wine. The worst kind,
don't you know. I say, it's a rotten shame she has to marry him. But
that's the way of it with royalty, old chap. You Americans don't
understand it. They have to marry one another whether they like it or
not. But, I say, you'd better come over and stop with me to-night. It
will be better if they don't find you just yet."

Three days later, a man came down to relieve Chase of his office; he was
unceremoniously supplanted in the Duchy of Rapp-Thorberg.

It was the successful pleading of the Princess Genevra that kept him
from serving a period in durance vile.

CHAPTER V

THE ENGLISH INVADE

The granddaughter of Jack Wyckholme, attended by two maids, her husband
and his valet, a clerk from the chambers of Bosworth, Newnes & Grapewin,
a red cocker, seventeen trunks and a cartload of late novels, which she
had been too busy to read at home, was the first of the bewildered
legatees to set foot upon the island of Japat. A rather sultry, boresome
voyage across the Arabian Sea in a most unhappy steamer which called at
Japat on its way to Sidney, depressed her spirits to some extent but not
irretrievably.

She was very pretty, very smart and delightfully arrogant after a manner
of her own. To begin with, Lady Agnes could see no sensible reason why
she should be compelled to abandon a very promising autumn and winter at
home, to say nothing of the following season, for the sake of protecting
what was rightfully her own against the impudent claims of an unheard-of
American.

She complacently informed her solicitors that it was all rubbish; they
could arrange, if they would, without forcing her to take this
abominable step. Upon reflection, however, and after Mr. Bosworth had
pointed out the risk to her, she was ready enough to take the step,
although still insisting that it was abominable.

Mr. Saunders was the polite but excessively middle-class clerk who went
out to keep the legal strings untangled for them. He was soon to
discover that his duties were even more comprehensive.

It was he who saw to it that the luggage was transferred to the lighter
which came out to the steamer when she dropped anchor off the town of
Aratat; it was he who counted the piec