n law? Wouldn't that do?"

"With whom were you speaking?"

"Mr. Morrison."

"Ma'am, let me beg you to be more prudent with that youth than with
any one. Our young friend Caesar Augustus is I believe harmlessness
itself compared with him. Be on your guard, ma'am. Curb that fatal
feminine appendage, your tongue. I have remarked that he watches us.
But a short time since I saw him eagerly conversing with your Grand
Ducal Highness's maid. For me he has already laid several traps that I
have only just escaped falling into by an extraordinary presence of
mind and a nimbleness in dialectic almost worthy of a born rogue."

"Oh Fritzi," said the frightened Priscilla, laying her hand on his
sleeve, "do go and tell him I didn't mean what I said."

Fritzing wiped his brow again. "I fail to understand," he said,
looking at Priscilla with worried eyes, "what there is about us that
can possibly attract any one's attention."

"Why, there isn't anything," said Priscilla, with conviction. "We've
been most careful and clever. But just now--I don't know why--I began
to think aloud."

"Think aloud?" exclaimed Fritzing, horrified. "Oh ma'am let me beseech
you never again to do that. Better a thousand times not to think at
all. What was it that your Grand Ducal Highness thought aloud?"

And Priscilla, shamefaced, told him as well as she could remember.

"I will endeavour to remedy it," said poor Fritzing, running an
agitated hand through his hair.

Priscilla sighed, and stood drooping and penitent by the dresser while
he went down the room to where Robin still leaned against the wall.

"Sir," said Fritzing--he never called Robin young man, as he did
Tussie--"my niece tells me you are unable to distinguish truth from
parable."

"What?" said Robin staring.

"You are not, sir, to suppose that when my niece described her sisters
as dead that they are not really so."

"All right sir," said Robin, his eyes beginning to twinkle.

"The only portion of the story in which my niece used allegory was
when she described them as having been smothered. These young ladies,
sir, died in the ordinary way, in their beds."

"Feather beds, sir?" asked Robin briskly.

"Sir, I have not inquired into the nature of the beds," said Fritzing
with severity.

"Is it not rather unusual," asked Robin, "for two young ladies in one
family to die at once? Were they unhealthy young ladies?"

"Sir, they did not die at once, nor were they unhealthy. They