“Whatever concerns you is nothing to me,” I replied coldly.

He smiled.  “Are you quite sure?”

I had turned the sword on myself, so it seemed.  But I said:  “I answered some of your questions once; I believe I was explicit.”

“As to that I can say you were; startlingly explicit.  It is a delicate matter to profess one’s regard for a woman before total strangers.  It is not impossible that she would have done the same thing in your place.  Her regard for you—­”

I interrupted him with a menacing gesture.  “I am extremely irritable,” I said.  “I should regret to lose control of myself in a place like this.”

“To be sure!” he said.  “This is England, where they knock one another down.”

“We do not murder on this side of the channel,” I retorted.

“That is unkind.  Your friend was a very good shot,” with a significant glance at his useless arm.  “But for my arm, and his nerves, which were not of the best order, I had not lived to speak to you to-night.”

“So much the worse for the world,” said I.  “Your questions?”

“Ah!  Who was that remarkably beautiful woman under your distinguished care Thursday evening?”

“I see that our conversation is to be of the shortest duration.  Who she was is none of your business,” rudely.  I unfolded my paper and began reading.

“Perhaps, after all,” not the least perturbed by my insolence, “it were best to state on paper what I have to say.  I can readily appreciate that the encounter is disagreeable.  To meet one who has made a thing impossible to you sets the nerves on edge.”  He caught up his opera hat, his cane and gloves.  He raised the lapel of his coat and sniffed at the orchid in the buttonhole.

Some occult force bade me say, “Why do you wish to know who she was?”

He sat down again.  “I shall be pleased to explain.  That I mistook her for another who I supposed was on the other side of the channel was a natural mistake, as you will agree.  Is it not strange that I should mistake another to be the woman who is so soon to be my wife?  Is there not something behind this remarkable, unusual likeness?  Since when are two surpassingly beautiful women, born in different lands, of different parents, the exact likeness of each other?”

Now as this was a thing which had occupied my mind more than once, I immediately put aside the personal affair.  That could wait.  I threw my paper onto the table.

“Do you know, sir,” said I, “that thought echoes my own?”

“Let us for the moment put ourselves into the background,” said the Prince.  “What do you know about her Serene Highness the Princess Hildegarde; her history?”

“Very little; proceed.”

“But tell me what you know.”

“I know that her father was driven to a gambler’s grave and that her mother died of a broken heart, and that the man who caused all this wishes to break the heart of the daughter, too.”