"And I, your Highness," instantly answered Pierre, with a succession of the sprightly bows that had so incensed old Onda. "It is to be supposed that I should bear in memory so great an event; but I could not have dared to hope for so great a condescension from you." Hagané replied by a smile and a nod. The latter might have served equally for the kerai who, well within the shadow of Mrs. Todd, made vehement signs of corroboration to his daimyo. The host then asked of the party, "Shall I not order for you foreign chairs? We keep them in the storehouse for such occasions." "Thank you kindly, Prince," answered Mrs. Todd for all; "we'll take the floor. In Rome we do as the Romans do." With a lunge the good lady disposed herself in the centre of the apartment, sitting, as it were, at her own feet. The others placed themselves near her, making roughly the outline of a horseshoe, Dodge being at one end, with Yuki beside him, and Prince Hagané at the other. Gwendolen had with difficulty kept Pierre away from Yuki. "Remember," she had warned, "this may be a sort of Sherlock Holmes affair for making you two betray yourselves and each other. You can't be too careful. Old Hagané is a vibrating lodestone of uncanny intuition, and Onda a parental avalanche just ready to slide!" In the effort to keep his hungry eyes from Yuki, Pierre began to explore the room. His attention was first caught by the arrangement of dwarf pine branches and brown cones, in combination with straggling sprays of a yellow orchid. Then he saw the three paintings beyond. "Saint Raphael! what are those?" he murmured under his breath, and made as if to rise from the floor. All turned to him; he sought only the eyes of his host. "Your Highness," he pleaded, his face vital with intelligence, "if not unpardonably rude, may I rise and examine more closely those marvellous paintings?" Hagané reflected a hint of his brightness. "With greatest pleasure. They are, of course, hung to be seen. I am honored that they attract your notice." Pierre rushed to the tokonoma, taking instinctively the attitudes of a self-forgetting connoisseur. "Say, I can't stay out of this!" cried the minister, and crooked his long legs into the angles of a katydid in his efforts to rise. Following the two others, he reached the tokonoma, planting himself, feet wide apart, exactly in front. Such pictures, painted in sets of three and mounted in single, flexible panels of rich brocade, were designed for hanging in the broad tokonoma of noblemen's houses, or in the living-rooms of priests. This set was in monochrome, on paper which had been stained by time to the color of old ivory. The central painting represented a famous Chinese poet sitting in meditation upon a misty mountain-ledge. The lateral ones were landscapes, one of winter snow, the other, summer fulness. Each illustrated a well-known verse of the poet.