"She has a reason, I suppose," observed Goron, slowly twisting his eternal caporal. "Goron appears to know all her secrets," said Cargill, winking at me knowingly. "He trots her about Paris at night, and she confides in him all her little anxieties and fears. A most charming arrangement." The astute officer, who, by his energetic action, had succeeded in effectually stamping out the Anarchist activity, smiled and raised both his hands in protest, crying,-- "No, no, messieurs! It is in you younger men that the pretty women confide. As for me, I am old, fat and ugly." "But you act as the protector of the philanthropic Elizaveta Nicolayevna," observed Cargill, "therefore, when you next see her, tell her how her portrait in _Le Monde_ has been admired by an impressionable young Englishman, named Deedes, and present to her the compliments and profound admiration of all three of us." "Don't do anything of the kind, Goron," I cried, rather angrily. "Remember I know the lady, and such words would be an insult." "Very well, if you're really going to call on her, you might convey our message," exclaimed the attache, nonchalantly. "You're not jealous, are you?" "I don't think there's any need for jealousy," I responded. Goron laughed heartily at this retort. He was more shrewd than the others, and I instinctively felt that he had guessed that Her Highness and myself were a little more than chance-met acquaintances. But the others continued their fooling, happy, careless, bubbling over with buoyant spirits. Many good fellows frequent the bar of the Chatham, one of the most cosmopolitan resorts in Europe. Many adventurers and "dead beats" make it their headquarters, but of all that merry, easy-going crowd of men with money, and those in want of it, to find two men more popular and more generous than Hugh Cargill and Henry Allender would have been difficult. As we still sat together smoking and drinking, the pair directed their chaff continually in my direction. Evidently believing that the incomparable beauty of Her Highness had fascinated me, they urged me to go to her and suggest a drive in the Bois, a quiet little dinner somewhere, or a box at the opera. Little did they dream how every jesting word they uttered pained me, how each laugh at my expense caused me excruciating anguish, or how any detrimental allegation, spoken unthinkingly, sank deeply into my mind. But I had never worn my heart on my sleeve, therefore I treated their banter with good humour, determined that, at least for the present, they should remain in ignorance of the fact that I was the husband of the woman whose adorable face and charming manner had excited universal admiration in the gayest capital of the world. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS.