as luxurious as his original.  He had brought Count Lika, Secretary of Legation to the Austrian Embassy, dressed as an Albanian, with him.  The two were stretched on couches, and discoursing of my father’s reintroduction of the sedan chair to society.  My father explained that he had ordered a couple of dozen of these chairs to be built on a pattern of his own.  And he added, ’By the way, Richie, there will be sedaniers—­porters to pay to-day.  Poor men should be paid immediately.’  I agreed with the monarch.  Contemplating him, I became insensible to the sting of ridicule which had been shooting through me, agonizing me for the last eight-and-forty hours.  Still I thought:  can I never escape from the fascination?—­let me only get into Parliament!  The idea in me was that Parliament lifted me nearer to Ottilia, and would prompt me to resolute action, out of his tangle of glittering cobwebs.  I told him of my interview with Beauchamp Hill.  ’I have never known Kesensky wrong yet,’ said he; ‘except in his backing of Falmouth’s horses.’  Count Lika murmured that he hoped his Chief would be wrong in something else:  he spoke significantly.  My father raised his eyebrows.  ‘In his opinion,’ Lika accepted the invitation to pursue, ’Prince Ernest will not let that announcement stand uncontradicted.’

My father’s eyes dwelt on him.  ‘Are we accused of it?’

Lika slipped from the question.  ’Who is accused of a newspaper’s doings?  It is but the denial of a statement.’

’I dare them to deny it!—­and, Lika, my dear fellow, light me a cigarette,’ said my father.

‘Then,’ said Lika, touching the flame delicately, ’you take the view that Kesensky is wrong in another thing besides horses.’

I believe he struck on the subject casually:  there was nothing for him to gain or lose in it; and he had a liking for my father.

After puffing the cigarette twice or thrice my father threw it down, resuming his conversation upon the sedan, the appropriate dresses of certain of the great masquerading ladies, and an incident that appeared to charge Jorian DeWitt with having misconducted himself.  The moment Lika had gone upstairs for two or three hours’ sleep, he said to me:  ’Richie, you and I have no time for that.  We must have a man at Falmouth’s house by eight o’clock.  If the scrubbing-maid on all fours-not an inelegant position, I have remarked—­declares him dead, we are at Bartlett’s (money-lender) by ten:  and in Chippenden borough before two post meridian.  As I am a tactician, there is mischief! but I will turn it to my uses, as I did our poor Jorian to-night; he smuggled in the Chassediane:  I led her out on my arm.  Of that by and by.  The point is, that from your oath in Parliament you fly to Sarkeld.  I implore you now, by your love for me and the princess, not to lose precious minutes.  Richie, we will press things so that you shall be in Sarkeld by the end of the month.  My son! my dear boy! how you