Carlton attended to several matters of business, and then lunched with Mrs. Downs and her niece. He had grown to like them very much, and was sorry to lose sight of them, but consoled himself by thinking he would see them a few days at least in Paris. He judged that he would be there for some time, as he did not think the Princess Aline and her sisters would pass through that city without stopping to visit the shops on the Rue de la Paix. "All women are not princesses," he argued, "but all princesses are women." "We will be in Paris on Wednesday," Mrs. Downs told him. "The Orient Express leaves there twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, and we have taken an apartment for next Thursday, and will go right on to Constantinople." "But I thought you said you had to buy a lot of clothes there?" Carlton expostulated. Mrs. Downs said that they would do that on their way home. Nolan met Carlton at the station, and told him that he had followed the Hohenwalds to the Hotel Meurice. "There is the Duke, sir, and the three Princesses," Nolan said, "and there are two German gentlemen acting as equerries, and an English captain, a sort of A.D.C. to the Duke, and two elderly ladies, and eight servants. They travel very simple, sir, and their people are in undress livery. Brown and red, sir." Carlton pretended not to listen to this. He had begun to doubt but that Nolan's zeal would lead him into some indiscretion, and would end disastrously to himself. He spent the evening alone in front of the Cafe de la Paix, pleasantly occupied in watching the life and movement of that great meeting of the highways. It did not seem possible that he had ever been away. It was as though he had picked up a book and opened it at the page and place at which he had left off reading it a moment before. There was the same type, the same plot, and the same characters, who were doing the same characteristic things. Even the waiter who tipped out his coffee knew him; and he knew, or felt as though he knew, half of those who passed, or who shared with him the half of the sidewalk. The women at the next table considered the slim, good-looking young American with friendly curiosity, and the men with them discussed him in French, until a well-known Parisian recognized Carlton in passing, and hailed him joyously in the same language, at which the women laughed and the men looked sheepishly conscious. On the following morning Carlton took up his post in the open court of the Meurice, with his coffee and the Figaro to excuse his loitering there. He had not been occupied with these over-long before Nolan approached him, in some excitement, with the information that their Royal Highnesses--as he delighted to call them--were at that moment "coming down the lift."