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ing young man standing before her. "I was feeling a little like a beleaguered castle surrounded by the enemy's army. I will try not to let you fall into their hands, but if they once know you are a prince I fear there will be no escaping them! Follow me," she went on gayly, skirting the crowd adroitly and bringing the young prince in safety to the flowery corner where Miss Dalmy still sat.

"And I shall expect you to be the best of friends," declared Mrs. Finding at the conclusion of her introduction. "You are both friends of mine, so you must be friends of each other. That is capable of mathematical demonstration, I believe," she said impressively, smiling at the two as she turned away to go back to her importunate tourists.

Apparently they found no difficulty in proving the ambassadress's proposition.

She is an "American Queen," as they say, and one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen. She is clever, too, and sings like an angel. Besides which, de Raslorf (he knows everything) tells me she has some nine hundred thousand American dollars in her own right. But I swear, Boris, this has nothing to do with my infatuation. And indeed, there is no necessity, for my august parent, although a tyrant, is generous with his roubles. She is visiting the ambassadress, who I thought was the most beautiful American I had ever seen until I met her friend. In spite of her seeming to be an unattainable piece of perfection, I sometimes think she cares for my unworthy self. What is a poor devil to think when he sees her eyes light up and her fair cheeks color as I bow before her? I wish I dared tell her to-morrow I am sure she that I adore her; but it is too soon. has no idea that I love her—yet. I shall have to wait a while, but it is hard. I can't even see her as often as I long to, for Donskoi seems suddenly possessed with the energy of a fiend and works me like a droschki horse, and then the Findings keep open house, so that there is always a mob of people around her.

From which it will be perceived that the

Two weeks later Miss Dalmy wrote to an ambassadress, in spite of her intentions and old Ogontz chum:

I have met a very dangerously fascinating man here. He is a Russian prince and one of the handsomest men I ever saw. He is clever, too, for his chief, Count Donskoi, relies greatly on him, and indeed, gives him so much of the important legation work to do that his time for social duties is decidedly limited. He says he has never been so busy as lately. But in spite of that we have seen a great deal of him he gives the most beautiful, recherché little dinners and luncheons to his friends! He and I seem to be peculiarly sympathetic. Perhaps it is because I am half Russian myself. Are you astonished? I am sure you are. My father was a Russian. To tell you the truth, I have always been a little ashamed of my foreign blood, and never spoke of it because I wanted my

friends to think me an American. But now I

glory in it! It is a bond between the prince and myself. I must tell him about my poor papa some day. We have so many things to talk of when we meet, and it is such a shadowy, unimportant fact to me, that I never think of it. At first I supposed he was an admirer of Gordon's (she has half the young secretaries and some of the chiefs, too, at her feet), and I was really piqued; but now I believe he comes to the Embassy to see

me. I shall have to be careful, or I shall fall hopelessly in love with an unattainable Russian prince!

The same evening, after having smoked an incredible number of cigars in solitary meditation, Prince Sumarakoff drew some note-paper from a drawer of his desk and wrote to an old friend, the second secretary of the Russian Embassy at Paris:

manœuvres, had not been able to command the prince's time to her entire satisfaction. When two weeks more of dinners and luncheons and teas and horseback rides had passed without a proposal, she decided that it was time to actively interfere in the interest of her two friends.

The ambassador had just settled himself in the library with an interesting book when his wife came to that conclusion. She found her husband without any difficulty, and, seating herself on the arm of his chair, she told him of her intention.

"They are in love-desperately, hopelessly, head-over-heels in love—but they haven't a fair chance here. There are too many people about and the life is too conventional for romance, and then Donskoi is really becoming insufferable! He haunts the house, and he works Sumarakoff to death with his old reports and things. The poor boy told me he was up until two o'clock skoi insisted on having this morning. And last night finishing some papers that Don

when he is here he makes himself obnoxious. The other afternoon I sent Marie

and Sumarakoff into the garden to clip a basket of gardenias, and before I could detain Donskoi he had followed them and stayed with them until the last gardenia was cut! You don't attend to your duty of keeping Donskoi out of the way at all," she

I have met a dangerously fascinating girl here. said severely.

"It is very hard work," pleaded the ambassador, "and not strictly in my line. You see, with you there was no competitionThe ambassadress gave her husband such a terrible look that he was rendered speechless, and then she clasped her hands over her knees in her favorite attitude when thinking.

"I shall take them down to Cuernavaca for Holy Week," she declared meditatively, "with only a small party that I can control. You will not be able to go, dear, I know, and I am sorry; but perhaps, after all, it is for the best you can keep an eye on Donskoi here. They shall have the week of their lives, and Donskoi will learn that even a wily old Russian diplomat is not a match for an American woman."

Mrs. Finding did not know Count Donskoi very well.

Three days later Mrs. Finding started with her party. Beside Miss Dalmy there was the Comtesse Hélène d'Irénée de Chatran, the wife of the French minister, a much older woman than the American ambassadress, Prince Sumarakoff and two young attachés, devoted slaves of Mrs. Finding. She destined one of these diplomatic pawns for the Countess's constant escort, the other for her own, so that the prince might give his undivided attention to Miss Dalmy. This, it is unnecessary to say, he did with an untiring and undivided zeal which would have caused his rapid promotion had the energy so applied been turned into diplomatic channels. With delicacy and skill Mrs. Finding contrived that the prince and Miss Dalmy, while feeling thoroughly chaperoned, should yet see each other in a way that had not been possible before.

The days and nights in Cuernavaca were long delights to the two. Mrs. Finding was a kind as well as an astute friend when she brought her protégés to the beautiful old city. What more lovely setting for a girl's romance could she have found? Love seemed to be in the warm, fragrant air; lurked under the great palms in the very courtyard of the hotel; in the dim, bedraped churches, thronged with worshippers in Holy Week; called from the throbbing guitars and jaranas in the alameda all the long, vibrant evenings, and above all, seemed to have its very being in the tangled wilderness of fragrant blossoms, in the

flower-laden paths and cool, sequestered corners of the Borda Gardens. It was there that the prince and Miss Dalmy loved most to linger, and he determined it should be there he would tell her his love and ask her to marry him.

The moon, riding high in the heavens, was drenching the lovely old gardens in a silver radiance when the two wandered down one of the blossom-bordered, deserted paths to a little summer-house perched high up in an angle of the wall. All the world was at church listening to the Good Friday service, and it had been easy enough to slip away unnoticed in the thronged, dimly lit Cathedral. The prince had guided her, half-reluctant, half-consenting, through the shifting, genuflecting crowds, out into the dusky streets filled with hurrying, penitent figures, past the great doorway guarding the entrance to the gardens, and so into that fragrant, abandoned paradise. They were alone and intensely happy.

Far below their airy resting-place a pleasant campagna stretched away, bathed in the white moonlight. Miss Dalmy pushed back the lace mantilla she had thrown about her in the Cathedral, and leaning over the broad ledge of the Moorish arch, gazed out at the beautiful scene. "white wonder" of her face so revealed, the exquisite, unaccustomed intimacy of their fragrant solitude, went to the prince's head like wine. He leaned forward a little: "Will you sing me something?" he asked in a hushed tone.

The

For an instant the girl hesitated; then, resting her head lightly against the stone arch and half turning from the young man, she began to sing:

Hush! hush, my heart, thy tender, pleading cry;

Hide from the world thy bliss and all thy woe, Let not thy grief breathe forth the faintest sigh,

Nor smile nor tear thy anguished longing show. Wait! wait, my heart, nor seek that thou hast not! 'Tis not for thee-the happiness of earth. To love but be not loved is thy sad lot,

To feel deep love and dare not own its birth. O Love! some call thee cruel some most sweet!

O Death! some long for thee and some do fear!

If sweet and cruel Love I cannot greet,

I long for fearful Death as friend most dear.

The golden thread of voice floated out over the moonlit gardens to a tall, dark man who was making his way up the shadowy, flower-tangled pathway.

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The prince leaned nearer the singer and took one of her white, slender hands in both of his and kissed it.

"Do not sing of Death when Love is here before you praying to be taken to your heart," he said passionately. The girl turned a little toward him and a faint, happy smile curved her lips.

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"If I could only tell you-if I could only find words to tell you how utterly dearexactly what the prince was going to tell her she never knew, for at that moment a thin, dark man emerged from the shadowed pathway and stood before them. The prince sprang to his feet.

"Donskoi!" he exclaimed in a bewildered tone. "What brings you here?"

Count Donskoi cleared his throat. "Despatches from His Imperial Majesty, Prince. I shall be obliged, much as I regret it, to ask your instant attention to the same. Miss Dalmy will doubtless pardon this intrusion, when she knows that large diplomatic interests are involved." For an instant Count Donskoi's persuasive smile overspread his countenance. "I have come on a special train that I might have the benefit of an immediate consultation with Prince Sumarakoff. Shall we walk back to the hotel or shall I call a carriage?"

Miss Dalmy preferred to walk, and together the three took their almost silent way back to the hotel. At the entrance Count Donskoi and the prince took their leave. The latter bowed low over the young girl's hand.

"I will see you in the morning," he said in a troubled whisper. But Miss Dalmy, watching them as they crossed in the brilliant light of the plaza and disappeared into the rim of darkness beyond, knew, by some heart-breaking intuition, that she had seen the last of Prince Sumarakoff.

"And now, what is the meaning of this?" curtly inquired the prince, when he and Count Donskoi found themselves in the former's apartments.

Donskoi cleared his throat again. The prince, with an impatient gesture, motioned him to a seat, but remained standing himself.

"Will you kindly explain your intrusion of this evening and as briefly as possible?" he reiterated in no pleasant tone.

"Prince Sumarakoff surely cannot doubt

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Donskoi, this is some of your infernal work! What does it mean?" he burst out. Count Donskoi lit a cigarette.

"My dear Prince," he said soothingly, "you certainly cannot have forgotten that when you were sent out here to me it was with the understanding that I was not only to be your official chief but your private mentor. The-er-anxieties which you had previously occasioned your father suggested this course to him. He and I are old friends-I have tried to do my best."

"And you call this your best? Getting

me recalled just when just when I am most anxious to remain!"

"Gratitude is seldom the reward of disinterestedness," said the count sententiously. "I don't call it disinterestedness; I call it a most unwarrantable—a most impertinent intrusion on my private affairs," cried the young man hotly.

"Prince," said Donskoi quietly, "the affairs of a man like yourself—the heir to a princely title, to vast estates, to enormous wealth-can never be truly private. They are of interest and vital importance to a great many beside himself. When such a man is about to compromise his station in life, his whole future, is it an 'intrusion' for an old friend to step forward and try to prevent it?"

"What do you mean?" once more demanded the prince, pacing up and down the room in his excitement.

Count Donskoi threw away the end of the cigarette he had been smoking and lit a fresh one. If it were possible to connect such an adjective with the rusé diplomat. one would have said he was nervous.

"If I am not greatly mistaken you were about to offer your hand, fortune, and title this evening to Miss Dalmy when-happily -I interrupted you." He waited an instant for the young man to speak, but getting no reply, he proceeded, gazing thoughtfully out of the window instead of at the prince. He missed the rare pleasure of

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