“Yes.”  He hesitated, a little to name a woman whose tragedy had once filled the newspapers.

Mrs. March gazed after her with the fascination which such tragedies inspire.  “What grace!  Is she beautiful?”

“Very.”  Burnamy had not obtruded his knowledge, but somehow Mrs. March did not like his knowing who she was, and how beautiful.  She asked March to look, but he refused.

“Those things are too squalid,” he said, and she liked him for saying it; she hoped it would not be lost upon Burnamy.

One of the waitresses tripped on the steps near them and flung the burden off her tray on the stone floor before her; some of the dishes broke, and the breakfast was lost.  Tears came into the girl’s eyes and rolled down her hot cheeks.  “There!  That is what I call tragedy,” said March.  “She’ll have to pay for those things.”

“Oh, give her the money, dearest!”

“How can I?”

The girl had just got away with the ruin when Lili and her hireling behind her came bearing down upon them with their three substantial breakfasts on two well-laden trays.  She forestalled Burnamy’s reproaches for her delay, laughing and bridling, while she set down the dishes of ham and tongue and egg, and the little pots of coffee and frothed milk.

“I could not so soon I wanted, because I was to serve an American princess.”

Mrs. March started with proud conjecture of one of those noble international marriages which fill our women with vainglory for such of their compatriots as make them.

“Oh, come now, Lili!” said Burnamy.  “We have queens in America, but nothing so low as princesses.  This was a queen, wasn’t it?”

She referred the case to her hireling, who confirmed her.  “All people say it is princess,” she insisted.

“Well, if she’s a princess we must look her up after breakfast,” said Burnamy.  “Where is she sitting?”

She pointed at a corner so far off on the other side that no one could be distinguished, and then was gone, with a smile flashed over her shoulder, and her hireling trying to keep up with her.

“We’re all very proud of Lili’s having a hired man,” said Burnamy.  “We think it reflects credit on her customers.”

March had begun his breakfast with-the voracious appetite of an early-rising invalid.  “What coffee!”

He drew a long sigh after the first draught.

“It’s said to be made of burnt figs,” said Burnamy, from the inexhaustible advantage of his few days’ priority in Carlsbad.

“Then let’s have burnt figs introduced at home as soon as possible.  But why burnt figs?  That seems one of those doubts which are much more difficult than faith.”

“It’s not only burnt figs,” said Burnamy, with amiable superiority, “if it is burnt figs, but it’s made after a formula invented by a consensus of physicians, and enforced by the municipality.  Every cafe in Carlsbad makes the same kind of coffee and charges the same price.”