“They can’t bear me, because I don’t knit socks and don’t know how to bake almond cakes,” said her dear little Serene Highness, looking up with tender appeal at Lady Molly’s grave and beautiful face; “and they will be so happy to see a real estrangement between my husband and myself.” It appears that last year, whilst the Grand Duke was doing his annual cure at Marienbad, the Countess of Hohengebirg went to Folkestone for the benefit of her little boy’s health. She stayed at one of the Hotels there merely as any English lady of wealth might do--with nurses and her own maid, of course, but without the paraphernalia and nuisance of her usual German retinue. Whilst there she met an old acquaintance of her father’s, a Mr. Rumboldt, who is a rich financier, it seems, and who at one time moved in the best society, but whose reputation had greatly suffered recently, owing to a much talked of divorce case which brought his name into unenviable notoriety. Her Serene Highness, with more mopping of her blue eyes, assured Lady Molly that over at Schloss Starkburg she did not read the English papers, and was therefore quite unaware that Mr. Rumboldt, who used to be a _persona grata_ in her father’s house, was no longer a fit and proper acquaintance for her. “It was a very fine morning,” she continued with gentle pathos, “and I was deadly dull at Folkestone. Mr. Rumboldt persuaded me to go with him on a short trip on his yacht. We were to cross over to Boulogne, have luncheon there, and come home in the cool of the evening.” “And, of course, something occurred to disable the yacht,” concluded Lady Molly gravely, as the lady herself had paused in her narrative. “Of course,” whispered the little Countess through her tears. “And, of course, it was too late to get back by the ordinary afternoon mail boat?” “That boat had gone an hour before, and the next did not leave until the middle of the night.” “So you had perforce to wait until then, and in the meanwhile you were seen by a girl named Jane Turner, who knew you by sight, and who has been blackmailing you ever since.” “How did you guess that?” ejaculated Her Highness, with a look of such comical bewilderment in her large, blue eyes that Lady Molly and I had perforce to laugh.