"There was no need, Your Highness," responded Tellier, easily. "In the first place, she was, of course, in no real danger. In the second place, I perceived instantly that fate was playing into my hands. In fact, the incident could not have been more à propos if it had been arranged by my guardian angel. For from the chair beside which I was stationed a man sprang out and kicked the dog away. Your Highness must have remarked his agility and strength--may even have seen his face." "No," said the Prince. "I was not near enough to see it distinctly." "I saw it, Your Highness, very distinctly, and I assure you that it was that of a man in the full enjoyment of health. Even from his agility, Your Highness could doubtless judge whether the man was seriously ill." The Prince hitched about in his chair a little impatiently. He was beginning to find the Frenchman tedious. "Most certainly he was not seriously ill," he agreed; "nor, I should say, even slightly so. What is that to me? Pray have done with this mystery!" Tellier's face was glowing with all a Frenchman's pride in a coup de théâtre--his moment of triumph had arrived. "Of all the eyes which witnessed that episode, seemingly so slight and so unimportant," he said, proudly, "mine were the only ones which saw its full significance. Your Highness will, no doubt, be surprised when I inform you that this gentleman, so agile and so athletic, was no other than Lord Vernon!" CHAPTER VI The Path Grows Crooked In the sitting-room of apartment A, in the south wing of the Grand Hôtel Royal, Lord Vernon was tramping nervously up and down while his companions regarded him with evident anxiety. "I tell you fellows," he was saying, "it can't be kept up--I thought so from the first, but all the rest of you seemed to think it would be so infernally easy that I was ashamed to say anything. I knew something was sure to happen to give us away, and something has happened. What was I to do? Sit there like a mummy and allow that dog to frighten those girls to death? What the deuce are you laughing at, Collins?" "I'm laughing at your tragic tone. No, you couldn't have sat still--though I don't suppose the young ladies were in any serious danger. They were pretty, no doubt?" "Ah!" said Vernon, with a mental smacking of the lips at the entrancing picture the words called up. "That, of course, made it doubly impossible to sit still. Did they know you?" "Oh, no; never saw me before; hadn't the slightest suspicion that they were talking to such a famous personage. They said they were Americans." "Then I don't see that any harm has been done." "Unfortunately, when I was coming back, all bundled up in my chair, we ran right into them down here at the door, and they recognised me instantly--I could tell that by their gasp of amazement as they shrank back against the wall." "Still, if you preserved a cold and haughty demeanour, they may have concluded they were mistaken."