Usk was late in keeping his dinner engagement with the Steinherzes. It was not his fault, as he explained eagerly when he arrived; he had left Llandiarmid at an unearthly hour in the morning, to make sure of catching the early train from Aberkerran, and had got up to town in excellent time. It was when he was driving from his rooms to the hotel that the delay occurred. The Archduke Ferdinand Joachim, cousin to the Emperor of Pannonia, who had just arrived on a visit to England, was being conducted in state to Buckingham Palace, and the British public had turned out in full force to welcome him. The royal carriages and liveries, and the fact that a popular Prince had gone to meet the traveller, made it evident that this was an occasion for cheering, and accordingly dense crowds lined the route, to the dire interruption of the traffic at all the cross-roads, in one of which Usk sat fuming in his hansom. “Well, you must have had a pretty good view of the royalties, any way,” said Maimie Logan. “Oh yes, but I had no particular yearning for that. I have seen the Prince so often, you know, and I didn’t care about the other chap. But I wished you and Miss Steinherz had been there. It’s a chance you don’t often get at this time of year.” “What is the Archduke like, now?” asked Mr Steinherz suddenly. “You would be able to see him distinctly?” “Quite.” Usk turned to his host with ready deference. “A fair-sized man, I should say--looks as though he had been born in uniform, as all those Germans do. Hair brushed straight back, rather _à la_ scrubbing-brush, as far as I could see, big pince-nez, a sort of nondescript brown moustache, with the points turned up fiercely. I think that must have been dyed, though, for his hair was grey behind.” “Yes,” said Mr Steinherz meditatively, “he is pretty well along--older than I am. He was in Venetia in the ’Sixties--made his name there. And it wasn’t a particularly sweet name, either. I guess a good few Italians have unfulfilled vows of vengeance out against him yet.” “Say, pappa!” broke in Félicia; “how did you get to know that much about a no-account German prince?”