“The wretched woman!” he said, almost aloud, so great was his perturbation, and just then the subdued hum of a second motor reached him. “I wonder who now!” he soliloquized, precipitately retreating behind one of the palms at the back of the balcony--ready for inaction, as it were, for, in spite of all his _savoir-faire_, he no longer knew to which saint he should address his prayers. “Has she perhaps given a double _rendez-vous_ here?” he cogitated, and as if to give him right, absurd as the supposition seemed, he suddenly heard coming from below the humorous greetings of his old acquaintance, Preston Wynne. So great was his surprise that he once more advanced, this time with every precaution, and peered downward into his own state salon. Laurence, like a well-behaved hostess, was seated now on a _canapé_ before Moray and Wynne, and two other gentlemen, unknown to Régis, who wore on their dress-coats the insignia of several Orders, were hovering about her. Evidently too shrewd to invite Moray alone, she was giving a little semi-official reception, expecting, doubtless, by this move to pull the wool over his, Régis’s, eyes. Reassured by the safety of numbers, he hurried to his study, where he summoned his old confidential servant and envoy extraordinary. “François,” he said, as soon as the valet entered, “you will see that her Serene-Highness Princess Palitzin does not leave the house without my being advised of it. Remain in the little octagonal room off the main hall, and come and warn me the moment she asks for her carriage.” François saluted in the military fashion--a habit he had never been able to lose--and was on the point of retreat when his master called him back. “The Princess,” he said, “is receiving some friends here to-night, as you know. Find out who has already arrived, and report to me.” “That man is worth his weight in gold,” mused the much-perturbed “Antinoüs.” “He knows everybody by sight, has capacious ears and a silent tongue. They don’t make them like that any longer, more’s the pity!” And snatching up an evening paper, which he did not even pretend to read, he awaited François’s return with such patience as he could muster. In a few minutes that greatest of the world’s wonders, a perfect servant, re-entered and respectfully stood at his master’s elbow, waiting to be questioned. “Well!” said Régis. “So far, Monsieur le Marquis,” quietly stated the old soldier, who looked like a retired general in his irreproachable evening dress, “there are in the salon with her Serene-Highness Monsieur le Capitaine Moray of the British Embassy; Monsieur Wynne of America; his Excellency the Marquis di Sebastiani, Italian _Chargé-d’Affaires_; Sefim Bey of the Ottoman Embassy; Monsieur le Comte de Védrines, attached to the French Embassy at St. Petersburg--now on leave; Monsieur le Vicomte de Braisles, First Secretary of the French Embassy at Madrid--also on leave; and Lord Charles Arbuthnot of the British Foreign Office.”