"Humph!" said Mrs. Todd again, and closed her lorgnette with a disappointed snap. "Well, there's time for him yet! You had better look out, for if he is found here--" She shut her lips with a snap like the lorgnette-case. Because of avowed sympathy with Pierre, the good lady had assumed an air of displeasure with Yuki which all the new rank and wealth could not overcome. Yuki, strange to say, liked her the better for it. She hugged the memory of Mrs. Todd's cool looks as a fanatic might have hugged his haircloth shirt. Gwendolen had turned away. She did not wish either Yuki or her mother to gain a hint of her personal thoughts. At Yuki's last statement, her quick mind had supplemented, "He has not set foot in this house. No--but the garden is wide, the steps and galleries inviting." Yuki hid some gnawing secret, of this she was sure. More carriage-wheels crunched the gravel and Yuki's heart at once. "Ah," said Gwendolen, coolly, now beside a window, "here's the Emperor come to see you, Yuki!" Yuki ran forward gasping. Anything might have happened on this reeling day. "No," laughed the other. "I just teased you. But it is some magnate, I assure you. My heavens, what a swagger!" Mrs. Todd, hastening to her daughter's side, drew the window-curtain farther. Her face glowed with satisfaction. "Prince Korin," she announced, "he is a dear man! I shall be pleased to meet him again." "Come along, mother," said Gwendolen, a little brusquely; "he hasn't called on us." "I sha'n't do anything of the kind," said the matron, indignantly. "Prince Korin took me in to dinner last week at the German Legation. Doubtless he will be as much pleased as I to renew the acquaintance." "Please do not urge your mother to depart," Yuki flung back over her shoulder as she went toward the door; "I want to speak with you, Gwendolen, on some important matter." Without a qualm she delivered the wondering peer into the outstretched hands of the American lady. Drawing Gwendolen to a corner of the big room she said, in a low and agitated voice, "He--that one we spoke--he is even now asleep in this garden. It is terrible, but I could not send him off. I gave medicine; he was nearly to die of great illness. Make no sound or look of surprise; no one suspects, unless it is the butler, Tora. Perhaps you can help me. What makes all more dangerous, more terrible, is a secret meeting of state to be held here this very hour. Prince Korin is the first. You and Mrs. Todd must go before Hagané come, or he will feel great anger to me. Your father is to arrive. Oh, Gwendolen, do you see any way to save?" "It is the most frightful complication I ever knew in my life," said Gwendolen, awed for once into calm. "Why, of all days, should the meeting fall on this?" "Some terrible crisis in war. All may depend on this hour,--our very national existence."