“You live like a king”—­then said Mr. Harland, a trifle bitterly—­ “You know how to use your father’s fortune.”

“My father’s fortune was made to be used,” answered Santoris, with perfect good-humour—­“And I think he is perfectly satisfied with my mode of expending it.  But very little of it has been touched.  I have made my own fortune.”

“Indeed!  How?” And Harland looked as he evidently felt, keenly interested.

“Ah, that’s asking too much of me!” laughed Santoris.  “You may be satisfied, however, that it’s not through defrauding my neighbours.  It’s comparatively easy to be rich if you have coaxed any of Mother Nature’s secrets out of her.  She is very kind to her children, if they are kind to her,—­in fact, she spoils them, for the more they ask of her the more she gives.  Besides, every man should make his own money even if he inherits wealth,—­it is the only way to feel worthy of a place in this beautiful, ever-working world.”

He preceded us out of the saloon and showed us the State-rooms, of which there were five, daintily furnished in white and blue and white and rose.

“These are for my guests when I have any,” he said, “Which is very seldom.  This for a princess—­if ever one should honour me with her presence!”

And he opened a door on his right, through which we peered into a long, lovely room, gleaming with iridescent hues and sparkling with touches of gold and crystal.  The bed was draped with cloudy lace through which a shimmer of pale rose-colour made itself visible, and the carpet of dark moss-green formed a perfect setting for the quaintly shaped furniture, which was all of sandal-wood inlaid with ivory.  On a small table of carved ivory in the centre of the room lay a bunch of Madonna lilies tied with a finely twisted cord of gold.  We murmured our admiration, and Santoris addressed himself directly to me for the first time since we had come on board.

“Will you go in and rest for a while till luncheon?” he said—­“I placed the lilies there for your acceptance.”

The colour rushed to my cheeks,—­I looked up at him in a little wonderment.

“But I am not a princess!”

His eyes smiled down into mine.

“No?  Then I must have dreamed you were!”

My heart gave a quick throb,—­some memory touched my brain, but what it was I could not tell.  Mr. Harland glanced at me and laughed.

“What did I tell you the other day?” he said—­“Did I not call you the princess of a fairy tale?  I was not far wrong!”

They left me to myself then, and as I stood alone in the beautiful room which had thus been placed at my disposal, a curious feeling came over me that these luxurious surroundings were, after all, not new to my experience.  I had been accustomed to them for a great part of my life.  Stay!—­how foolish of me!—­’a great part of my life’?—­ then what part of it?  I briefly reviewed my own career,—­a difficult