I say?--comes to ten thousand pieces of gold." She produced a document, beautifully ruled. "If your Royal Highness would kindly initial here----"

Mechanically the Princess signed.

"Thank you, your Royal Highness. And now perhaps I had better go and see about it at once."

She curtsied deeply, and then, remembering her position, saluted and marched off.

Now Roger Scurvilegs would see her go without a pang; he would then turn over to his next chapter, beginning "Meanwhile the King----," and leave you under the impression that the Countess Belvane was a common thief. I am no such chronicler as that. At all costs I will be fair to my characters.

Belvane, then, had a weakness. She had several of which I have already told you, but this is another one. She had a passion for the distribution of largesse.I know an old gentleman who plays bowls every evening. He trundles his skip (or whatever he calls it) to one end of the green, toddles after it, and trundles it back again. Think of him for a moment, and then think of Belvane on her cream-white palfrey tossing a bag of gold to right of her and flinging a bag of gold to left of her, as she rides through the cheering crowds; upon my word I think hers is the more admirable exercise. And, I assure you, no less exacting. When once one has got into this habit of "flinging" or "tossing" money, to give it in any ordinary way, to slide it gently into the palm, is unbearable. Which of us who has, in a heroic moment, flung half a crown to a cabman can ever be content afterwards to hold out a handful of three-penny bits and coppers to him? One must always be flinging...

So it was with Belvane. The largesse habit had got hold of her. It is an expensive habit, but her way of doing it was less expensive than most. The people were taxed to pay for the Amazon Army; the pay of the Amazon Army was flung back at them; could anything be fairer? True, it brought her admiration and applause. But what woman does not like admiration? Is that an offence? If it is, it is something very different from the common theft of which Roger Scurvilegs would accuse her. Let us be fair.

Meanwhile "the King of Euralia was prosecuting the war with utmost vigour." So says Roger in that famous chapter of his, and certainly Merriwig was very busy. On the declaration of war the Euralian forces, in accordance with custom, had marched into Barodia. However hot ran the passion between them, the two Kings always preserved the 

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