And now I guess I’m through,” and Mr Steinherz laughed to see Usk’s start of surprise at this complete and startling return to his ordinary mode of speech. “Then your family have actually no idea that you are alive?” “Not the slightest. They advertised their undying grief at my loss, and boomed that shipwreck all it was worth, for it cleared off a scandal in the most satisfactory way. The surprise wedding was buried in oblivion, and when a whisper of the truth got around, it was promptly silenced. Naturally, you couldn’t expect them allude to it on the tablet at Vindobona, though all of the other remarks proper to the occasion are there.” “And no one in America ever penetrated the secret?” “Just one man, and I was in deadly fear when I found it out. It was our mutual friend Hicks. He got it in his head that I was a Hamburg shipping clerk that the police were watching out for, who had forged his employer’s name and eloped with his daughter, and he set to work to trace my movements right back to my starting-point. Pretty soon he found he was on the wrong track, and then a chance word from a friend in Vindobona sent him flying along. The scandal, the rumoured marriage, the escaped Prince--there it all was, and if a mysterious hint in his paper hadn’t suddenly shown me what he was aiming at, so that I took Konstantia along, and we just threw ourselves on his mercy, he would have made his own fortune and the ‘Crier’s’ by revealing all of the story. He took pity upon us and kept his mouth shut, and he and I have been friends ever since. I have appointed him Félicia’s trustee in case of my death.” “And you don’t intend to be reconciled to your family?” “Why should I? They are all thoroughly happy, believing me dead, and enjoying my property. If my son had lived--well, I don’t know, but I guess I would have laid things before him when he came of age, and given him his choice. Florian left only a daughter behind him, and Ramon has three, and no sons. There seems a fate against us Albrets. If he had concluded to claim such rights as will be mine on Ramon’s death, I daresay we could have fixed it. With the pile I can show, there wouldn’t be much difficulty in having them recognise my marriage. The Emperor could do it, with Ramon’s consent, and if I greased the wheels a bit, Félicia would pretty soon be a Princess of Arragon.” Maimie drew in her breath sharply. Usk spoke with some hesitation. “Please don’t think me officious, sir--it’s quite against myself, you know--but do you think it is fair to keep her in ignorance--the Princess, I mean?” “Miss Félicia Steinherz, you mean,” corrected Félicia’s father. “I think it so far fair that if the Emperor, and my brother Ramon, and all of my family, were to kneel to me to-morrow, and entreat me to come along back, I would refuse, and forbid them to mention the subject to her.” “Then you feel that your experiment was a success?”