ssip; and if the flirtation (destined by the hostess to
disgust Leopold with his Chancellor's matrimonial projects) did not
advance by leaps and bounds, it was certainly not the fault of
Baroness von Lyndal.

"Egon has been told to use his eyes and ears for all they're worth at
Lyndalberg, and now he's called upon to hand in his first report," she
said to herself, when the younger von Breitstein was off on his
mission across the lake.

But for once, at least, the "Chancellor's Jackal" was wronged by
unjust suspicion. He arrived at Schloss Breitstein ignorant of his
brother's motive in sending for him, though he shrewdly suspected it
to be something quite different from the one alleged.

The Chancellor was in his study, a deep windowed, tower room, with
walls book-lined nearly to the cross-beamed ceiling. He sat reading a
budget of letters when Egon was announced, and if he were really ill,
he did not betray his suffering. The square face, with its beetling
brows, eyes of somber fire, and forehead impressive as a cathedral
dome, showed no new lines graven by pain.

"Sit down, Egon," he said, abruptly, tearing in half an envelope
stamped with the head of Hungaria's King. "I'll be ready for you in a
moment."

The young man took the least uncomfortable chair in the room, which
from his point of view was to say little in its favor; because the
newest piece of furniture there, has been made a hundred years before
the world understood that lounging was not a crime. Over the high,
stone mantel hung a shield, so brightly polished as to fulfil the
office of a mirror, and from where Egon sat, perforce upright and
rigid, he could see himself vignetted in reflection.

He admired his fresh color, which was like a girl's, pointed the waxed
ends of his mustache with nervous, cigarette-stained fingers, and
thinking of many agreeable things, from baccarat to roulette, from
roulette to races, and races to pretty women, he wondered which he had
to thank for this summons to the Chancellor. Unfortunately, brother
Lorenz knew everything; one's pleasant peccadilloes buzzed to his ears
like flies; there was little hope of deceiving him.

Egon sighed, and his eyes turned mechanically from his own visage on
shining steel, to the letter held in an old hand so veined that it
reminded the young man of a rock netted with the sprawling roots of
ancient trees. He had just time to recognize the writing as that of
Adalbert, Crown Prince of Hunga