“Whereupon Jack Lamont probably swore—­ I understand that profanity is sometimes distressingly prevalent aboard ship—­ but nevertheless he allowed the Lieutenant to lead him like a lamb to the slaughter.  Well, not being powerful enough to throw him overboard when I realized the state of the case, I did the next best thing.  I became cloyingly sweet to him.  I smiled upon him:  I listened to his farrago of nonsense about the chemical components of his various notable inventions, as if a girl attends a ball to study chemistry!  Before half an hour had passed the infant had come to the conclusion that here was the first really sensible woman he had ever met.  He soon got to making love to me, as the horrid phrase goes, as if love were a mixture to be compounded of this ingredient and that, and then shaken before taken.  I am delighted to add, as a testimony to my own powers of pleasing, that Jack soon forgot he was a sacrifice, and really, with a little instruction, he would become a most admirable flirt.  He is coming to call upon me this afternoon, and then he will get his eyes opened.  I shall tread on him as if he were one of his own moujiks.”

“What a wonderful imagination you have, Kate.  All you have said is pure fancy.  I saw he was taken with you from the very first.  He never even glanced at me.”

“Of course not:  he wasn’t allowed to.”

“Nonsense, Kate.  If I thought for a moment you were really in earnest, I should say you underestimate your own attractions.”

“Oh, that’s all very well, Miss Dorothy Dimple; you are trying to draw a red herring across the trail, because you know that what I want to hear is why Lieutenant Drummond was so anxious to get me somewhere else.  What use did he make of the opportunity the good-natured Prince and my sweet complacency afforded him?”

“He said nothing which might not have been overheard by any one.”

“Come down to particulars, Dorothy, and let me judge.  You are so inexperienced, you know, that it is well to take counsel with a more sophisticated friend.”

“I don’t just remember—­”

“No, I thought you wouldn’t.  Did he talk of himself or of you?”

“Of himself, of course.  He told me why he was going to Russia, and spoke of some checks he had met in his profession.”

“Ah!  Did he cash them?”

“Obstacles—­ difficulties that were in his way, which he hoped to overcome.”

“Oh, I see.  And did you extend that sympathy which—­”

There was a knock at the door, and the maid came in, bearing a card.

“Good gracious me!” cried Katherine, jumping to her feet.  “The Prince has come.  What a stupid thing that we have no mirror in this room, and it’s a sewing and sitting room, too.  Do I look all right, Dorothy?”

“To me you seem perfection.”

“Ah, well, I can glance at a glass on the next floor.  Won’t you come down and see him trampled on?”