“These things you are expecting from our present host?”

“We are, and we expect to get them.  I have watched him day by day.  My confidence in him has grown.”

Stephanie was silent.  She sat looking into the fire.  Seaman, keenly observant as always, realised the change in her, yet found something of mystery in her new detachment of manner.

“Your Highness,” he urged, “I am not here to speak on behalf of the man who at heart is, I know, your lover.  He will plead his own cause when the time comes.  But I am here to plead for patience, I am here to implore you to take no rash step, to do nothing which might imperil in any way his position here.  I stand outside the gates of the world which your sex can make a paradise.  I am no judge of the things that happen there.  But in your heart I feel there is bitterness, because the man for whom you care has chosen to place his country first.  I implore your patience, Princess.  I implore you to believe what I know so well,—­that it is the sternest sense of duty only which is the foundation of Leopold Von Ragastein’s obdurate attitude.”

“What are you afraid that I shall do?” she asked curiously.

“I am afraid of nothing—­directly.”

“Indirectly, then?  Answer me, please.”

“I am afraid,” he admitted frankly, “that in some corner of the world, if not in this country, you might whisper a word, a scoffing or an angry sentence, which would make people wonder what grudge you had against a simple Norfolk baronet.  I would not like that word to be spoken in the presence of any one who knew your history and realised the rather amazing likeness between Sir Everard Dominey and Baron Leopold Von Ragastein.”

“I see,” Stephanie murmured, a faint smile parting her lips.  “Well, Mr. Seaman, I do not think that you need have many fears.  What I shall carry away with me in my heart is not for you or any man to know.  In a few days I shall leave this country.”

“You are going back to Berlin—­to Hungary?”

She shook her head, beckoned her maid to open the door, and held out her hand in token of dismissal.

“I am going to take a sea voyage,” she announced.  “I shall go to Africa.”

The morrow was a day of mild surprises.  Eddy Pelham’s empty place was the first to attract notice, towards the end of breakfast time.

“Where’s the pink and white immaculate?” the Right Honourable gentleman asked.  “I miss my morning wonder as to how he tied his tie.”

“Gone,” Dominey replied, looking round from the sideboard.

“Gone?” every one repeated.

“I should think such a thing has never happened to him before,” Dominey observed.  “He was wanted in town.”

“Fancy any one wanting Eddy for any serious purpose!” Caroline murmured.

“Fancy any one wanting him badly enough to drag him out of bed in the middle of the night with a telephone call and send him up to town by the breakfast train from Norwich!” their host continued.  “I thought we had started a new ghost when he came into my room in a purple dressing-gown and broke the news.”