"I have more than enough, sir."

"Good. Besides, if you turn up at Monte Carlo you may have a chance to apply some of the tactics you once used in breaking a faro bank in New Orleans. It would perhaps be rare sport to you for a change."

Again Darby showed the limit of his emotion, this time it being a chuckle that escaped him.

"Then good-bye and good luck. Beware lest you fall in love with the charmer, my boy. Such a Lurline may storm the ramparts of your flinty old heart, and once lodged therein, heaven help you."

"Just so, sir. I am too old a bird to be caught with chaff. I have been through the mill. Don't waste any sympathy on Joel Darby, sir. But, there is an old acquaintance of yours here."

"Ah! who may that be—male or female?" for his mind instantly reverted to the girl from Porto Rico, and he wondered if Darby could have run across her by chance.

"You once showed me a group picture of a very delightful scene in a West Indian flower court, with the fountain and bird cages. Besides yourself and a young Spanish captain there were a charming girl and an old hidalgo with a fierce beard and a mass of iron gray hair—a man once seen never forgotten."

"Ah! Yes, General Porfidio de Brabant, the noblest Roman of them all, whose voice is like the thunder burst of his tropical home, and yet who obeys her slightest wish as meekly as a lamb."

"Just so—sweet Porfidio is in Dublin."

"I am not surprised, since I have reason to believe she[26] is here. In fact the woman disguised as a Sister of the Holy Grail was Georgia, his niece, and the girl in the picture."

[26]

Darby's thin lips gathered as though prepared to emit a whistle, for like a flash he comprehended a very important matter in connection with his employer; but his will got the better of his inclination and not the faintest sound followed.

"More than this, sir, I am afraid he has some connection with these reckless schemers you have come here to watch."

"It would not surprise me—the senor general is of Spanish descent and doubtless loves the institutions of Spain, so that with his generous and ardent nature he is ready to risk all he has in order to help the wretched mother country in her great 

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