castle," he explained, half breathlessly, "after a most exacting but successful day in the laboratory. A million apologies if I have delayed your dinner."

"Time is infinite in the country, especially on a fine night like this," I remarked lightly, as we entered the hall, and Orkins relieved him of his black top-coat and hat. His dinner jacket, I noticed, was much too small for him, and his waistcoat so short that it came perilously near revealing a section of his middle-age bulge. There were soup stains on his shirt-front, which indicated that his shirt had been out to dinner before.

As I waved him to a chair, I said: "You're really very punctual, even if you avoided our car which was sent to the station to meet you, and walked here. You can depend upon it, Prince Matani will not miss the chance to drive to the castle in state when he steps off the train."

Unconsciously my lips sneered as I spoke the young princeling's name. Olinski nodded and smiled understandingly. "Ah!" he said. "I take it that you do not look with favor on the match your scholarly brother is about to arrange between your charming niece and my noble countryman?"

"To be frank, no," I replied.

"So I gathered. And why?"

"I have very strong reasons for opposing their marriage," I said; "and my sister, Jane, is just as dead set against it as I am. Every one knows that the Prince came to America to make a rich and advantageous marriage. Pat will soon come into a large inheritance from her mother's estate, and we don't want her to throw her fortune and herself away on this--this penniless, titled gigolo."

Olinski chuckled. "Perhaps just a trifle over-perfumed for a man," he said, "and addicted to the habit of biting his fingernails, but such details cannot detract from his royalty. He dances divinely. He seems to be your niece's devoted slave."

"He's been camping on our door-step all summer," I retorted. "Why Henry favors such a nincompoop, I cannot imagine."

"But the charming Patricia seems to have lost her head over him," Olinski rejoined. "So what can you do?"

"It's up to you to do something," I answered, promptly. "You are in a position to know all the discreditable incidents in the Prince's past, and your word carries great weight with Henry. Surely you do not believe that he really loves Pat?"

 Prev. P 10/209 next