"No; by life! It may be sooner than you think!"

"You are forgetting your promise already."

"Your Highness's pardon," he begged.

They laughed, but their hearts were sad, this luckless American
and hapless sovereign who would, if she could, be a woman.

"It is now three o'clock--the hour when you were to have called
to see me," she said, again sitting unconcernedly before him in
the window seat. She was not afraid of him. She was a princess.

"I misunderstood you, your highness. I remembered the
engagement, but it seems I was mistaken as to the time. I came
at three in the morning!"

"And found me at home!"

"In an impregnable castle, with ogres all about."





XII

A WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES