HER FAIRY PRINCE BY _Gertrude Warden_ AUTHOR OF "THE HAUNTED HOUSE AT KEW," "AS A BIRD TO THE SNARE," ETC. [Illustration] PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1895 Copyright, 1895, by J.B. Lippincott Company. Electrotyped and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A. HER FAIRY PRINCE. CHAPTER I. "Hallo, Armstrong! Thought you were in Australia!" "Hallo, Garth! Thought you were in gaol!" Such were the greetings interchanged in Boulogne market-place on a hot August forenoon by two Englishmen who had not met for five years. The first speaker, Mr., or Captain Garth, as he styled himself, was a man of medium height, inclined to stoutness and of florid complexion, with bloodshot blue eyes, plentiful prematurely-white hair, a heavy cavalry moustache, and a jovial swaggering manner. His clothes were carefully brushed and darned, his boots beautifully polished, and his chimney-pot hat, set rakishly on one side on his white curls, was suspiciously shiny in its surface. The Captain's red face, overhanging eyebrows, and ferocious moustache were wont to frighten children, of whom he was specially fond; but his features were well-cut and his manners plausible, and most women considered him a very good-looking man for his six-and-fifty years. Of his companion's claims to personal beauty there could be no doubt, in spite of the air of drink, dissipation, and neglect which hung about him. Wallace Armstrong at six-and-twenty was intended by nature to be a splendid specimen of muscular manhood--tall, broad-shouldered, vigorous, and sinewy, looming enormous over the small French soldiers who slouched in twos and threes across the market-place, and followed where he walked by the admiring glances of the stalwart bare-footed fish-girls trooping up and down to and from the quay. But already Wallace Armstrong had done his best to injure the heritage of vigour and manly beauty which had devolved upon him at birth. Under his eyes, of a brilliant bluish-gray colour shaded by thick black lashes, late hours and hard drinking had imprinted lines and shadows ill-suited to early manhood; his whole expression was sullen and defiant, as though he distrusted and despised his fellow men and was at little trouble to disguise his feelings towards them. His manner of greeting his old acquaintance was not only insolent as to words, but still more so in the tone he used the while he roughly shook Garth's detaining hand off his coat-sleeve. "It's of no use to claim acquaintanceship with me now!" Armstrong remarked, harshly. "I'm broke, stone-broke--and, what's more, if I had any money, I know better now than to play cards with you for it!" Captain Garth's red face grew a shade redder; but he was not sensitive as to snubs, and his tone was altogether friendly when he spoke again.