A young and fashionable woman got out of a perfectly appointed victoria, and M. Louis, the manager of the staff, came forward and bowed low, as he only did to clients of the very highest distinction. The lady responded with a gracious smile, and the manager called a servant. "The lift for Mme. la Princesse Sonia Danidoff," and the next moment the beautiful vision, who had created quite a sensation merely in passing through the hall, had disappeared within the lift and was borne up to her apartments. Princess Sonia was one of the most important clients that the Royal Palace Hotel possessed. She belonged to one of the greatest families in the world, being, by her marriage with Prince Danidoff, cousin to the Emperor of Russia and, so, connected with many royal personages. Still barely thirty years of age, she was not pretty but remarkably lovely, with wonderful blue eyes which formed a strange and most bewitching contrast to the heavy masses of black hair that framed her face. A woman of immense wealth, and typically a woman of the world, the Princess spent six months of the year in Paris, where she was a well-known and much-liked figure in the most exclusive circles; she was clever and cultivated, a first-rate musician, and her reputation was spotless, although it was very seldom that she was accompanied by her husband, whose duties as Grand Chamberlain to the Tsar kept him almost continuously in Russia. When in Paris she occupied a suite of four rooms on the third floor of the Royal Palace Hotel, a suite identical in plan and in luxury with that reserved for sovereigns who came there incognito. The Princess passed through her drawing-room, a vast, round room, with a superb view over the Arc de Triomphe, and went into her bedroom where she switched on the electric light. "Nadine," she called, in her grave, melodious voice, and a young girl, almost a child, sprang from a low divan hidden in a corner. "Nadine, take off my cloak and unfasten my hair. Then you can leave me: it is late, and I am tired." The little maid obeyed, helped her mistress to put on a silken dressing gown, and loosened the masses of her hair. The Princess passed a hand across her brow, as if to brush away a headache. "Before you go, get a bath ready for me; I think that would rest me." Ten minutes later Nadine crept back like a shadow, and found the Princess standing dreamily on the balcony, inhaling deep breaths of the pure night air. The child kissed the tips of her mistress's fingers. "Your bath is quite ready," she said, and then withdrew. A few more minutes passed, and Princess Sonia, half undressed, was just going into her dressing-room when suddenly she turned and went back to the middle of the bedroom which she had been on the point of leaving. "Nadine," she called, "are you still there?" No answer came. "I must have been dreaming," the Princess murmured, "but I thought I heard someone moving about."