accident, but if Rudolph and Jerome were thrown off the scent, it
must have been done on purpose, and by a man who had a cogent
reason and exceptional resources."

"I believe the question is now one between my brother and myself,"
replied Geraldine, with a shade of offence in his tone.

"I permit it to be so, Colonel Geraldine," returned Prince
Florizel. "Perhaps, for that very reason, you should be all the
more ready to accept my counsels. But enough. That girl in yellow
dances well."

And the talk veered into the ordinary topics of a Paris ballroom in
the Carnival.

Silas remembered where he was, and that the hour was already near
at hand when he ought to be upon the scene of his assignation. The
more he reflected the less he liked the prospect, and as at that
moment an eddy in the crowd began to draw him in the direction of
the door, he suffered it to carry him away without resistance. The
eddy stranded him in a corner under the gallery, where his ear was
immediately struck with the voice of Madame Zephyrine. She was
speaking in French with the young man of the blond locks who had
been pointed out by the strange Britisher not half-an-hour before.

"I have a character at stake," she said, "or I would put no other
condition than my heart recommends. But you have only to say so
much to the porter, and he will let you go by without a word."

"But why this talk of debt?" objected her companion.