The first hitch presented itself just after Mr Hicks’s arrival in Europe, when the ‘Empire City Diurnal,’ a paper which was the unresting rival of the ‘Crier,’ and even more noted for its skill in exploiting sensations, suddenly published what purported to be an interview with an intimate friend of Félicia’s. Her father’s history was detailed in a highly-coloured style, embodying just enough of truth to wring severely the withers of the royal and imperial personages concerned, and ending with a claim, put forward apparently in all seriousness, to the crown of Pannonia itself on Félicia’s behalf. This claim was further pressed in a fervid editorial, calling upon the manhood of the United States to arise and cross the ocean, and sweep to destruction the effete usurpers who were keeping an American woman out of her rights by force and fraud. A subscription-list towards effecting this noble object followed, headed by the proprietor and ending with the office-boy, and the names of eleven volunteers (others were stated to be arriving in thousands) appeared below. The extracts telegraphed at once to Europe raised a ferment in Pannonian Court circles, and the Grand-Duke of Schwarzwald-Molzau was very nearly driven to wash his hands altogether of Félicia and her claims. Cyril happened to be in England at the time, but Mr Hicks succeeded in saving the situation. An expenditure at which the Grand-Duke stood aghast seemed nothing to him, and he cabled whole columns to his own journal. The next day the ‘Crier,’ strong in the indubitable fact of possessing one of the trustees of the claimant on its staff, administered a douche of cold water to the excited public of the ‘Diurnal.’ So far from possessing or advancing a claim to any crown whatsoever, Miss Steinherz was solely concerned to vindicate the good name of her mother; and the ‘Diurnal’s’ polemic was nothing but an attempt to prejudice her in this sacred task by alienating the august relatives who had welcomed the news of her existence with tears of joy, and were only restraining their eagerness to receive her into their midst in order that her claim might be properly substantiated according to law. “Draw it mild, Hicks!” said Cyril, when they next met, and he read this reply. “Any one can see you had your tongue in your cheek the whole time.” “Is that so, Count? Well now, I’d bet my bottom dollar you’re the only man that will see the thing was wrote sarcastic. There were tears in the Grand-Duke’s eyes when he read it, any way. And in the States the effect has been colossal, I hear, especially of the paragraph about the ‘Diurnal’s’ stopping the cash-boys’ salaries to stick in its subscription-lists. It isn’t every day a man can make a big scoop for his paper and pat Europe on the head as well.”