e you, in spite of all
your faults, with your good looks, our position, and my money,
wouldn't be a bad match for an ambitious girl."

"Your money?"

"I mean, should I choose to make you my heir, and I would choose, if
you married to please me. Who are these Mowbrays?"

"I haven't had the curiosity to inquire into their antecedents," said
Egon. "I only know that they're ladies, that they must be of some
consequence in their own country, or they couldn't have got the
letters of introduction they have; and that the girl is the prettiest
on earth."

"Mechtilde talked to me, I remember, a good deal about those letters
of introduction," the Chancellor reflected aloud. "But Rhaetia is a
long cry from England; and letters might be forged. I've known such
things to be done. Fetch me a big red volume you'll find on the third
shelf from the floor, at the left of the south window. You can't miss
it. It's 'Burke's Peerage.'"

Egon rose with alacrity to obey. He was rather thoughtful, for his
brother had put an entirely new and exciting idea into his head.

Presently the red volume was discovered and laid on the desk before
the Chancellor, who turned the leaves over until he found the page
desired. As his eye fell upon the long line of Mowbrays, his face
changed and the bristling brows came together in a grizzled line.
Apparently the women were not adventuresses, at least in the ordinary
acceptation of the term.

There they were; his square-tipped finger pressed down upon the
printed names with a dig that might have signified his disposition
toward their representatives.

"The girl's mother is the widow of Reginald, sixth Baron Mowbray," the
old man muttered half aloud. "Son, Reginald Edward, fifteen years of
age. Daughter, Helen Augusta, twenty-eight. Aha! She's no chicken,
this young lady. She ought to be a woman of the world."

"Twenty-eight!" replied Egon. "I'll eat my hat if she's twenty-eight."

"Doesn't she look it, by daylight?"

"Not an hour over nineteen. Might be younger. Jove, I was never so
surprised to learn a woman's age! By the by, I heard her telling Baron
von Lyndal last night, apropos of our great Rhaetian victory, that she
was eleven years old on the day it took place. That would make her
about twenty now. When she spoke, I remember she gave a look at her
mother, across the room, as though she were frightened. I suppose she
was hoping there was no copy of this big red book at Lyndalberg."

"That t