"4. Psse Aline.--Victoria-Beatrix-Louise-Helene, Alt.
Gr.-Duc. Nee a Grasse, Juin, 1872."


"Twenty-two years old," exclaimed Carlton. "What a perfect
age! I could not have invented a better one." He looked from
the book to the face before him. "Now, my dear young lady,"
he said, "I know all about YOU. You live at Grasse, and you
are connected, to judge by your names, with all the English
royalties; and very pretty names they are, too--Aline, Helene,
Victoria, Beatrix. You must be much more English than you are
German; and I suppose you live in a little old castle, and
your brother has a standing army of twelve men, and some day
you are to marry a Russian Grand-Duke, or whoever your
brother's Prime Minister if he has a Prime Minister-decides is
best for the politics of your little toy kingdom. Ah! to
think," exclaimed Carlton, softly, "that such a lovely and
glorious creature as that should be sacrificed for so
insignificant a thing as the peace of Europe when she might
make some young man happy?"

He carried a copy of the paper to his room, and cut the
picture of the group out of the page and pasted it carefully
on a stiff piece of card-board. Then he placed it on his
dressing-table, in front of a photograph of a young woman in a
large silver frame-which was a sign, had the young woman but
known it, that her reign for the time being was over.

Nolan, the young Irishman who "did for" Carlton, knew better
than to move it when he found it there. He had learned to