“How strange,” said St. George, looking after him, “how unutterably strange and sad.”

“That is good of you,” said Olivia.  “Aunt Dora and Antoinette thought I’d gone quite off my head, and Mr. Frothingham wanted to know why I didn’t bring back some one who could have been called as a witness.”

“Witness,” St. George echoed; “but the whole place is made of witnesses.  Which reminds me:  what is the sentence?”

“The sentence?” she wondered.

“The potatoes of Yaque,” he reminded her, “and my head?”

“Ah well,” said Olivia gravely, “inasmuch as the moon came up in the east to-night instead of the west, I shall be generous and give you one day’s reprieve.”

“Do you know, I thought the moon came up in the east to-night,” cried St. George joyfully.

* * * * *

It was half an hour afterward that Amory’s languid voice from somewhere in the sky broke in upon their talk.  As he came toward them across the terrace St. George saw that he was miraculously not alone.

Afterward Amory told him what had happened and what had made him abide in patience and such wondrous self-effacement.

When St. George had left him contemplating the far beauties of the little blur of light that was Med, Mr. Toby Amory set a match to one of his jealously expended store of Habanas and added one more aroma to the spiced air.  To be standing on the doorstep of a king’s palace, confidently expecting within the next few hours to assist in locating the king himself was a situation warranting, Amory thought, such fragrant celebration, and he waited in comparative content.

The moon had climbed high enough to cast a great octagonal shadow on the smooth court, and the Habana was two-thirds memory when, immediately back of Amory, a long window opened outward, releasing an apparition which converted the remainder of the Habana into a fiery trail ending out on the terrace.  It was a girl of rather more than twenty, exquisitely petite and pretty, and wearing a ruffley blue evening gown whose skirt was caught over her arm.  She stopped short when she saw Amory, but without a trace of fear.  To tell the truth, Antoinette Frothingham had got so desperately bored withindoors that if Amory had worn a black mask or a cloak of flame she would have welcomed either.

For the last two hours Mrs. Medora Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham had sat in a white marble room of the king’s palace, playing chess on Mr. Frothingham’s pocket chess-board.  Mr. Frothingham, who loathed chess, played it when he was tired so that he might rest and when he was rested he played it so that he might exercise his mind—­on the principle of a cool drink on a hot day and a hot drink on a cool day.  Mrs. Hastings, who knew nothing at all about the game, had entered upon the hour with all the suave complacency with which she would have attacked the making of a pie.  Mrs. Hastings had a secret belief that she possessed great aptitude.