would say--anything, so that he spoke to her again.

He raced up the path, calling her name. No answer came to his cries.
Above him lay the hillside, dozing in the noonday sun; below, the
Mediterranean, sleek and blue, without a ripple. He stood alone in a
land of silence and sleep.




CHAPTER VIII

AN ULTIMATUM FROM THE THRONE


At half-past twelve that morning business took Mr. Benjamin Scobell to
the royal Palace. He was not a man who believed in letting the grass
grow under his feet. He prided himself on his briskness of attack.
Every now and then Mr. Crump, searching the newspapers, would discover
and hand to him a paragraph alluding to his "hustling methods." When
this happened, he would preserve the clipping and carry it about in his
vest-pocket with his cigars till time and friction wore it away. He
liked to think of himself as swift and sudden--the Human Thunderbolt.

In this matter of the royal alliance, it was his intention to have at
it and clear it up at once. Having put his views clearly before Betty,
he now proposed to lay them with equal clarity before the Prince. There
was no sense in putting the thing off. The sooner all parties concerned
understood the position of affairs, the sooner the business would be
settled.