He gazed in admiration at her flushed cheeks and glowing eyes.

“It is beyond comparison,” he said, rising and bowing low.  “So shrewd is this plan that you make me a hostage forever; I shall not escape its memory if I live to be a thousand.”

And so it was settled, in this pretty drama of deception, that Harry Anguish was to be held in Edelweiss as hostage.  At parting she said, seriously: 

“A great deal depends on your discretion.  Mr. Anguish.  My guards will watch your every action, for they are not in the secret,—­excepting Quinnox,—­and any attempt on your part to communicate with Grenfall Lorry will be fatal.”

“Trust me, your Highness.  I have had much instruction in wisdom to-day.”

“I hope we shall see you often,” she said.

“Daily—­as a hostage,” he replied, glancing toward the Countess.

“That means until the other man is captured,” said that young lady, saucily.

As he left the castle he gazed at the distant building in the sky and wondered how it had ever been approached in a carriage.  She had not told him that Allode drove for miles over winding roads that led to the monastery up a gentler slope from the rear.

The next afternoon Edelweiss thrilled with a new excitement.  Prince Bolaroz of Axphain, mad with grief and rage, came thundering into the city with his Court at his heels.  His wrath had been increased until it resembled a tornado when he read the reward placard in the uplands.  Not until then did he know that the murderer had escaped and that vengeance might be denied him.

After, viewing the body of Lorenz as it lay in the sarcophagus of the royal palace, where it had been borne at the command of the Princess Yetive, he demanded audience with his son’s betrothed, and it was with fear that she prepared for the trying ordeal, an interview with the grief-crazed old man.  The castle was in a furore; its halls soon thronged with diplomatists and there was an ugly sense of trouble in the air, suggestive of the explosion which follows the igniting of a powder magazine.

The slim, pale-faced Princess met the burly old ruler in the grand council chamber.  He and his nobles had been kept waiting but a short time.  Within a very few minutes after they had been conducted to the chamber by Count Halfont and other dignitaries, the fair ruler came into the room and advanced between the bowing lines of courtiers to the spot where sat the man who held Graustark in his grasp.  A slender, graceful figure in black, proud and serious, she walked unhesitatingly to the old man’s side.  If she feared him, if she was impressed by his power, she did not show it.  The little drama had two stars of equal magnitude, neither of whom acknowledged supremacy in the other.

Bolaroz arose as she drew near, his gaunt face black and unfriendly.  She extended her hand graciously, and he, a prince for all his wrath, touched his trembling lips to its white, smooth back.