About eight o'clock on a lovely evening in July, Lord Orrel and Lady Olive, under the broad verandah of the Wilhelmshof, sat drinking their after-dinner coffee and watching the full moon sailing slowly up over the black ridges of the pine-crowned hills which stretched away to the southward. "I suppose the prince must have missed his train, or else the train was behind time and missed the coach," said Lord Orrel, taking out his watch. "It is rather curious that I should have met him regularly every year at Homburg or Spa or Aix, and that somehow you have never met him; and now it seems from his letter that we have both discovered this new little place of evil-smelling waters together. I am glad that he is bringing his daughter with him." "Ah, yes; his daughter--she is the second Marie Antoinette, isn't she?" said Lady Olive, putting her cup down and taking up her cigarette. "The most beautiful woman in Europe, the last daughter of the old House of Bourbon--I mean the elder branch, of course. And the prince?" "The first gentleman in Europe, in my opinion," replied the earl, flicking the ash off his cigar. "A man who, granted the possibility of circumstances which, of course, are not now possible, might mount the throne of Louis XIV., and receive the homage of all his courtiers without their knowing the difference. A great man, my dear Olive, born four generations out of his time. If he had succeeded the Grand Monarque--there would have been no French Revolution, no Napoleon----" "And therefore, my dear papa," laughed Lady Olive, "no Peninsular War, no Wellington, no Waterloo, no Nelson, no Nile and Trafalgar, and so none of that expiring British supremacy which you were arguing about so eloquently the other day in the House of Lords." While she was speaking, the double doors giving on to the verandah were thrown open, a lacquey, gorgeously uniformed in blue and silver, came out, with his body inclined at an angle of thirty degrees, and his arms hanging straight down, and said, in thick Swiss French: "Your Excellency and Madame la Marquise will find Milord and Miladi on the verandah here." As Lady Olive looked round she heard a rustle of frilled skirts on the planks of the verandah, and saw a tall, stately gentleman and the most beautiful woman she had ever seen coming towards her. The gentleman's eyes brightened and his brows lifted as he raised his hat. The woman's face might have been a mask, and her eyes looked out upon nothingness.