“And you didn’t feel it in the air!” mocked Miss Morris, laughing.  “You are a pretty poor sort of a man to let a girl tell you where to find the woman you love.”

Carlton did not answer, but stared at her very seriously and frowned intently.  “Now I have got to begin all over again and readjust things,” he said.  “We might have guessed she would be in London, on account of this royal wedding.  It is a great pity it isn’t later in the season, when there would be more things going on and more chances of meeting her.  Now they will all be interested in themselves, and, being extremely exclusive, no one who isn’t a cousin to the bridegroom or an Emperor would have any chance at all.  Still, I can see her!  I can look at her, and that’s something.”

“It is better than a photograph, anyway,” said Miss Morris.

“They will be either at Buckingham Palace or at Windsor, or they will stop at Brown’s,” said Carlton.  “All royalties go to Brown’s.  I don’t know why, unless it is because it is so expensive; or maybe it is expensive because royalties go there; but, in any event, if they are not at the palace, that is where they will be, and that is where I shall have to go too.”

When the train drew up at Victoria Station, Carlton directed Nolan to take his things to Brown’s Hotel, but not to unload them until he had arrived.  Then he drove with the ladies to Cox’s, and saw them settled there.  He promised to return at once to dine, and to tell them what he had discovered in his absence.  “You’ve got to help me in this, Miss Morris,” he said, nervously.  “I am beginning to feel that I am not worthy of her.”

“Oh yes, you are!” she said, laughing; “but don’t forget that `it’s not the lover who comes to woo, but the lover’s way of wooing,’ and that `faint heart’—­and the rest of it.”

“Yes, I know,” said Carlton, doubtfully; “but it’s a bit sudden, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I am ashamed of you!  You are frightened.”

“No, not frightened, exactly,” said the painter.  “I think it’s just natural emotion.”

As Carlton turned into Albemarle Street he noticed a red carpet stretching from the doorway of Brown’s Hotel out across the sidewalk to a carriage, and a bareheaded man bustling about apparently assisting several gentlemen to get into it.  This and another carriage and Nolan’s four-wheeler blocked the way; but without waiting for them to move up, Carlton leaned out of his hansom and called the bareheaded man to its side.

“Is the Duke of Hohenwald stopping at your hotel?” he asked.  The bareheaded man answered that he was.

“All right, Nolan,” cried Carlton.  “They can take in the trunks.”

Hearing this, the bareheaded man hastened to help Carlton to alight.  “That was the Duke who just drove off, sir; and those,” he said, pointing to three muffled figures who were stepping into a second carriage, “are his sisters, the Princesses.”