"Ah, Jax; and did she pat you on the head, old boy?" he asked. "And are you properly proud?" Jax wiggled his remnant of a tail. "Would you like to belong to her, Jax, and get patted every day? Yet she wouldn't take you--snapped me off short as that stump of yours when I offered you to her. Why was that, Jax?" Jax couldn't say, not being familiar with the ways of fair Americans, and the Prince patted him softly on his nobbly crown. "Just the same, she was a beauty, Jax; slim, straight, full of fire--a thoroughbred; and with a sense of humour, my dear, which you will find in not many women. Did you notice her cheeks, Jax, and her eyes? But of course not; you were very properly grovelling before her. And I owe you eternal gratitude, old boy; but for you, I'd have stalked past without seeing her. That would have been a pity, wouldn't it?" There was a knock at the door and Glück's head appeared. "I thought I told you," began the Prince-- "Your Highness will pardon me," explained Glück, quickly, "but there is a man here who insists that Your Highness will see him." "Who is he?" "This is his card, Your Highness," and Glück entered the room. "I have sent it back once, saying that Your Highness was not to be disturbed. He returned it, insisting--" Markeld took the card, glanced at it, and read: _"M. André Tellier, Paris. Agent du Service de Sûreté"_ Beneath this was a pencilled line--"Concerning the question of the succession." The Prince stared at it a moment in some astonishment, not unmixed with irritation. What could this fellow know concerning the succession? It was most probably simply an impertinence. The Paris police were famous for impertinences. Glück started for the door; since his master's boyhood, he had watched over him, attended him--he could read his countenance like an open book. The Prince glanced up. "Where are you going?" he demanded. "I go to tell the imbecile that Your Highness will not see him," responded Glück, impassively, his hand on the knob. The Prince smiled. He had a great fondness for his old retainer. "Wait," he said. "We must not permit ourselves to be governed by first impressions, nor swayed by prejudice. It is just possible that this fellow has something to tell me which I ought to hear. I can't afford to disregard any chance. So inform M. Tellier that I will see him," and he lighted a fresh cigarette resignedly. As he watched the smoke turn gray in the sunlight, it suddenly occurred to him that, in some unaccountable manner, the question of the succession had receded somewhat into the background; it no longer seemed to him of such overwhelming consequence; at least, he had not been thinking of it a moment before, but of something very different--