"Admiral Beamish?" enquired the visitor as I entered the room into which the maid had shown him. I told him that I was that individual. "Can you tell me what is my wife's present address? She appears to have changed her lodging. I am Mr Dowsett." I stared. The visitor was a small, insignificant, sandy-haired, mild-looking individual of about forty years of age. No wonder the servant had hesitated to call him a "gentleman." He carried "small shopkeeper" on him, written large. "I don't understand you. I fancy there is some mistake," I said. The stranger eyed me as though the mere tone of my voice filled him with alarm. "Perhaps so. But my wife told me that she had the honour of your acquaintance, She mentioned your name in her last letter." "Your wife? Who is your wife?" "My wife is Mrs Dowsett." "Dowsett?" A cold shiver went down my back. I had heard the name before. "Is it possible that you are referring to the Princess Margaretta?" "The--who?" "The Princess Margaretta--who, as all the world knows, is staying at the 'Parade Hotel'?" "I hope not--I do hope not. I hope she's not gone so far as the Princess Margaretta." The little man wrung his hands together as if he were positively suffering pain. "The Princess did say that her late husband's name was Dowsett. Perhaps you are a relation of his?" "Her late husband! I'm her present husband, if it's Mrs Dowsett. But perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me what kind of party the Princess Margaretta is--I mean to look at." I told him. I described the Princess's many charms. I spoke of her glorious hair, her great blue eyes, her irresistible smile, her exquisite figure, her bearing of great lady. I did not do her justice--who can do a beautiful woman justice by a mere description?--but I apparently did her sufficient justice to enable him to recognise the picture I had drawn. When I had finished, that little man dropped into a chair with what sounded to me very like a cry of anguish. "It's Eliza!" That is how he referred to the Princess Margaretta--the, as she had given me to understand, near relation to the Romanoffs, the reigning Russian family. "She's done it again! And worse than ever!--After all she promised!" When I understood what his broken exclamations might mean, I began to perspire. "I fear that you and I, sir, are at cross purposes. May I ask you to explain! And, first of all, be so good as to tell me who you are." "That's me." He took from his pocket a card, a common tradesman's card, on which was printed "James Dowsett. Grocer and General Provision Merchant," with an address at Islington. "That's me," he repeated with an air of positive pride, "that's who I am. And I'll do you as good a tea at one and ten as you'll get anywhere in London, though I say it." "And do you mean to tell me," I gasped, "that the Princess Margaretta is not a widow, not--not a relation of the Romanoffs, but--but a small grocer's actual wife?"