As for Lady Agnes, she seemed stricken by an unconquerable lassitude; the spirits that had controlled her voice, her look, her movements, were sadly missing.  It was with a most transparent effort that she managed to infuse life into her conversation.  There were times when she stood staring out over the sea with unseeing eyes, and one knew that she was not thinking of the ocean.  More than once Genevra had caught her watching Deppingham with eyes that spoke volumes, though they were mute and wistful.

From time to time the sentinels brought to Lord Deppingham and Chase missives that had been tossed over the walls by the emissaries of Rasula.  They were written by the leader himself and in every instance expressed the deepest sympathy for the plague-ridden chateau.  It was evident that Rasula believed that the occupants were slowly but surely dying, and that it was but a question of a few days until the place would become a charnel-house.  With atavic cunning he sat upon the outside and waited for the triumph of death.

“There’s a paucity of real news in these gentle messages that annoys me,” Chase said, after reading aloud the last of the epistles to the Princess and the Deppinghams.  “I rejoice in my heart that he isn’t aware of the true state of affairs.  He doesn’t appreciate the real calamity that confronts us.  The Plague?  Poison?  Mere piffle.  If he only knew that I am now smoking my last—­the last cigarette on the place!” There was something so inconceivably droll in the lamentation that his hearers laughed despite their uneasiness.

“I believe you would die more certainly from lack of cigarettes than from an over-abundance of poison,” said Genevra.  She was thinking of the stock she had hoarded up for him in her dressing-table drawer, under lock and key.  It occurred to her that she could have no end of housewifely thrills if she doled them out to him in niggardly quantities, at stated times, instead of turning them over to him in profligate abundance.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” he said, taking a short inhalation.  “I’ve never had the poison habit.”

“I say, Chase, can’t you just see Rasula’s face when he learns that we’ve been drinking the water all along and haven’t passed away?” cried Deppingham, brightening considerably in contemplation of the enemy’s disgust.

“And to think, Mr. Chase, we once called you ‘the Enemy,’” said Lady Agnes in a low, dreamy voice.  There was a far-away look in her eyes.

“I appear to have outlived my usefulness in that respect,” he said.  He tossed the stub of his cigarette over the balcony rail.  “Good-bye!” he said, with melancholy emphasis.  Then he bent an inquiring look upon the face of the Princess.

“Yes,” she said, as if he had asked the question aloud.  “You shall have three a day, that’s all.”

“You’ll leave the entire fortune to me when you sail away, I trust,” he said.  The Deppinghams were puzzled.