“If you’re not rich, and aren’t going to relatives, why not take an engagement with me?  Come, I’m in earnest.  I always make up my mind suddenly, if it’s anything important, and hardly ever regret it.  I’m sure we should suit.  You’ve got no nonsense about you.”

“Oh yes I have, lots!” I broke in.  “That’s all I have left—­that, and my sense of humour.  But seriously, you’re very kind—­to take me on faith like this—­especially when you began by thinking me mysterious.  I’d accept thankfully, only—­I’m engaged already.”

“To be married, I suppose you mean?”

“Thank heaven, no!  To a Princess.”

“Dear me, one would think you were a man hater!”

“So I am, a one-man hater.  What Simpkins is to you, that man is to me.  And that’s why I’m on my way to Cannes to be the companion of the Princess Boriskoff, who’s said to be rather deaf and very quick-tempered, as well as elderly and a great invalid.  She sheds her paid companions as a tree sheds its leaves in winter.  I hear that Europe is strewn with them.”

“Nice prospect for you!”

“Isn’t it?  But beggars mustn’t be choosers.”

“You don’t look much like a beggar.”

“Because I can make my own dresses and hats—­and nightgowns.”

“Well, if your Princess sheds you, let me know, and you may live yet to deliver me from Simpkins.  I feel you’d be equal to it!  My address is—­but I’ll give you a card.”  And, burrowing under her pillow, she unearthed a fat handbag from which, after some fumbling, she presented me with a visiting-card, enamelled in an old-fashioned way.  I read:  “Miss Paget, 34a Eaton Square.  Broomlands House, Surrey.”

“Now you’re not to lose that,” she impressed upon me.  “Write if you’re scattered over Europe by this Russian (I never did believe much in Princesses, excepting, of course, our own dear Royalties), or if you ever come to England.  Even if it’s years from now, I assure you Beau and I won’t have forgotten you.  As for your address—­”

“I haven’t any,” I said.  “At present I’m depending on the Princess for one.  She’s at the Hotel Majestic Palace, Cannes; but from what my friend Pam—­the Comtesse de Nesle—­says, I fancy she doesn’t stop long in any town.  It was the Comtesse de Nesle who got me the place.  She’s the only one who knows where I’m going, because—­after a fashion, I’m running away to be the Princess’s companion.”

“Running away from the Man?”

“Yes; also from my relatives who’re sure it’s my duty to be his companion.  So you see I can’t give you their address.  I’ve ceased to have any right to it.  And now I really think I had better go back to bed.”

CHAPTER II

At half-past ten this morning we parted, the best of friends, and I dropped a good-bye kiss into the deep black gorge between the promontories of Beau’s velvet forehead and plush nose.