"I may not be your prince after all," said Gerald weakly. He certainly felt unworthy of being so. "But you are--you are!" cried Mavis, with conviction, "you would not have found my message otherwise. I flung it from one of the windows into the pool below. And you picked it up, so I know that you are my prince. And then," she added, naively, "you are so very handsome." Haskins was pretty well hardened to admiration, since he knew more about women than was good for him. All the same the outspoken speech made him blush. "Who is Bellaria?" he asked abruptly, changing a too embarrassing subject. "My nurse, who has looked after me all my life. I call her the Ogress, and my guardian the Ogre. Not but what they are both very kind. I have all I want, save liberty." "And why cannot you get that?" "It is not the custom of the country." Haskins looked puzzled. "What do you mean, Mavis?" She raised her clear truthful eyes. "Why, you know, don't you? Major Rebb told me that all girls were brought up in seclusion until they reached the age of twenty-one, and then they were taken out to see the world. I wish ten months were past," sighed imprisoned beauty, "for then I shall be one and twenty, and able to leave the Pixy's House. Bellaria says that I won't like the world; but I shall, I shall, I shall." It was both cunning and clever of Major Rebb to suggest such a reason for her seclusion to the girl herself, as it prevented her feeling that she was being detained against her will. But she was apparently unaware that he ascribed a more terrible reason to the world beyond the gates, and that she was looked upon as a homicidal maniac. Of course this was wholly and entirely absurd. No one with such steady eyes, and who spoke so artlessly, could be tainted in that way. She was limited from sheer ignorance, and innocent beyond belief of evil: a child of nature, as unsophisticated as Undine herself. Gerald doubted if she would know the meaning of the word "murder!" "What is Bellaria's other name?" he asked, after a pause. "Dondi--Bellaria Dondi, who came from Florence, in Italy," said Miss Durham easily. "She is ugly, and old, and very cross; but I love her all the same, for she loves me and means well. And, oh! she tells such lovely, lovely stories, and can repeat poetry by Dante and Ariosto and Leopardi, for ever so long. I can repeat poetry also," she added hastily, with the complacency of a child. "I know lots of Homer, and of Shakespeare, and of Keats, and----" "Stop! stop!" interrupted Gerald hastily. "How can you when--according to your message--you are unable to read?" "Oh! Schaibar taught me." "Schaibar?"