fixedly at Nella and started back.
‘Ach!’ he exclaimed. ‘You!’
‘Yes, your Highness, it is indeed I. Father, this is his Serene Highness Prince Aribert of Posen—one of our most esteemed customers.’
‘You know my name, Fräulein?’ the new-comer murmured in German.
‘Certainly, Prince,’ Nella replied sweetly. ‘You were plain Count Steenbock last spring in Paris—doubtless travelling incognito—’
‘Silence,’ he entreated, with a wave of the hand, and his forehead went as white as paper.
Chapter Five. What occurred to Reginald Dimmock
IN another moment they were all three talking quite nicely, and with at any rate an appearance of being natural. Prince Aribert became suave, even deferential to Nella, and more friendly towards Nella’s father than their respective positions demanded. The latter amused himself by studying this sprig of royalty, the first with whom he had ever come into contact. He decided that the young fellow was personable enough, ‘had no frills on him,’ and would make an exceptionally good commercial traveller for a first-class firm. Such was Theodore Racksole’s preliminary estimate of the man who might one day be the reigning Grand Duke of Posen.
It occurred to Nella, and she smiled at the idea, that the bureau of the hotel was scarcely the correct place in which to receive this august young man. There he stood, with his head half-way through the bureau window, negligently leaning against the woodwork, just as though he were a stockbroker or the manager of a New York burlesque company.
‘Is your Highness travelling quite alone?’ she asked.
‘By a series of accidents I am,’ he said. ‘My equerry was to have met me at Charing Cross, but he failed to do so—I cannot imagine why.’
‘Mr Dimmock?’ questioned Racksole.
‘Yes, Dimmock. I do not remember that he ever missed an appointment before. You know him? He has been here?’
‘He dined with us last night—’ said Racksole,‘on Nella’s invitation,’ he added maliciously; ‘but to-day we have seen nothing of him. I know, however, that he has engaged the State apartments, and also a suite adjoining the State apartments—No. 55. That is so, isn’t it, Nella?’
‘Yes, Papa,’ she said, having first demurely examined a ledger. ‘Your Highness would doubtless like to be conducted to your room—apartments I mean.’ Then Nella laughed deliberately at the Prince, and said, ‘I don’t know who is the proper person to conduct you, and that’s a fact. The truth is that Papa and I are rather raw yet in the hotel line. You see, we only bought the place last night.’
‘You have bought the hotel!’ exclaimed the Prince.
‘That’s so,’ said Racksole.
‘And Felix Babylon has gone?’
‘He is going, if he has not already gone.’
‘Ah! I see,’ said the Prince; ‘this is one of your American “strokes”. You have bought to sell again, is that not it? You are on your holidays, but you cannot resist making a few thousands by way of relaxation. I have heard of such things.’
‘We sha’n’t sell again, Prince, until we are tired of our bargain. Sometimes we tire very quickly, and sometimes we don’t. It depends—eh? What?’
Racksole broke off suddenly to attend to a servant in livery who had quietly entered the bureau and was making urgent mysterious signs to him.
‘If you please, sir,’ the man by frantic gestures implored Mr Theodore Racksole to come out.
‘Pray don’t let me detain you, Mr Racksole,’ said the Prince, and therefore the proprietor of the Grand Babylon departed after the servant, with a queer, curt little bow to Prince Aribert.
‘Mayn’t I come inside?’ said the Prince to Nella immediately the millionaire had gone.
‘Impossible, Prince,’ Nella laughed. ‘The rule against visitors entering this bureau is frightfully strict.’
‘How do you know the rule is so strict if you only came into possession last night?’
‘I know because I made the rule myself this morning, your Highness.’
‘But seriously, Miss Racksole, I want to talk to you.’
‘Do you want to talk to me as Prince Aribert or as the friend—the acquaintance—whom I knew in Paris last year?’
‘As the friend, dear lady, if I may use the term.’
‘And you are sure that you would not like first to be conducted to your apartments?’
‘Not yet. I will wait till Dimmock comes; he cannot fail to be here soon.’
‘Then we will have tea served in father’s private room—the proprietor’s private room, you know.’
‘Good!’ he said.
Nella talked through a telephone, and rang several bells, and behaved generally in a manner calculated to prove to Princes and to whomever it might concern that she was a young woman of business instincts and training, and then she stepped down from her chair of office, emerged from the bureau, and, preceded by two menials, led Prince Aribert to the Louis XV chamber in which her father and Felix Babylon had had their long confabulation on the previous evening.
‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ she asked her companion, as she poured out for him a second cup of tea. The Prince looked at her for a moment as he took the proffered cup, and being a young man of sane, healthy, instincts, he could think of nothing for the moment except her loveliness.
Nella was indeed beautiful that afternoon. The beauty of even the most beautiful woman ebbs and flows from hour to hour. Nella’s this afternoon was at the flood. Vivacious, alert, imperious, and yet ineffably sweet, she seemed to radiate the very joy and exuberance of life.
‘I have forgotten,’ he said.
‘You have forgotten! That is surely very wrong of you? You gave me to understand that it was something terribly important. But of course I knew it couldn’t be, because no man, and especially no Prince, ever discussed anything really important with a woman.’
‘Recollect, Miss Racksole, that this afternoon, here, I am not the Prince.’
‘You are Count Steenbock, is that it?’
He started. ‘For you only,’ he said, unconsciously lowering his voice. ‘Miss Racksole, I particularly wish that no one here should know that I was in Paris last spring.’
‘An affair of State?’ she smiled.
‘An affair of State,’ he replied soberly. ‘Even Dimmock doesn’t know. It was strange that we should be fellow guests at that quiet out-of-the-way hotel—strange but delightful. I shall never forget that rainy afternoon that we spent together in the Museum of the Trocadéro. Let us talk about that.’
‘About the rain, or the museum?’
‘I shall never forget that afternoon,’ he repeated,
