Quite unconsciously, I had, it seemed, become an especial favourite of the silent, watchful old Konstantinos Vassos. He had no idea that I was a "crook" or that I was a secret agent. Fearing lest I, in my innocence, should fall a victim with his Excellency--being so often his companion--he had, with the assistance of the pretty Marie Balesco, contrived to impress upon my palm the secret sign of the conspirators. To this fact I certainly owe my life, for the assassin--a stranger to Sofia, who had been drawn by lot--would, no doubt, have shot me dead, had he not seen upon my raised hand "The Sign of the Cat's-paw." CHAPTER EIGHT. CONCERNING A WOMAN'S HONOUR. Few people are aware of the Prince's serious love affair. Beyond his most intimate friend, the Parson, I believe nobody knows of it except myself. The truth I have managed to glean only bit by bit, for he has never told me himself. It is a matter which he does not care to mention, for recollections of the woman are, no doubt, ever in his heart, and as with many of us, ever painful. No man or woman is thoroughly bad. Adventurer that he is, the Prince has ever been true and honourable, even generous, towards a good woman. The best and staunchest of friends, yet the bitterest of enemies if occasion required, he has never, to my knowledge, played an honest woman a scurvy trick. The little romance of real life occurred in Florence about three years ago. A good many people got hold of a garbled version of it, but none know the actual truth. He loved, and because he loved he dare not pose in his usual character as a prince, for fear that she should discover the fraud. On the contrary, he was living at a small cheap hotel on the Lung Arno as Jack Cross, and posing as a man who was very hard-up and, besides, friendless. He had entered upon the campaign with an entirely different object--an object which had for its consummation the obtaining of some very fine jewels belonging to the wife of an American who had made a corner in cotton, and who was engaged in seeing Europe. Max Mason and the Parson were both living as strangers to each other at the Savoy, in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, and idling daily in the Via Tornabuoni. A big coup had been planned, but instead of bringing it off, as luck would have it, his Highness had fallen hopelessly in love, and with a real royal princess, a woman whose beauty was universally proverbial. Their love-story was full of pathos. They were standing together in a garden one sunny afternoon, and were alone, without eavesdroppers. A moment before, he had been wondering what she would do; what she would say if she knew the ghastly truth-- that he was a thief!