“I would rather have it degenerate into an interest in painters myself,” said Carlton.

Miss Morris discovered, after she had returned to her own car, that she had left the novel where she had been sitting, and Carlton sent Nolan back for it.  It had slipped to the floor, and the fly-leaf upon which Carlton had sketched the Princess Aline was lying face down beside it.  Nolan picked up the leaf, and saw the picture, and read the inscription below:  “This is she.  Do you wonder I travelled four thousand miles to see her?”

He handed the book to Miss Morris, and was backing out of the compartment, when she stopped him.

“There was a loose page in this, Nolan,” she said.  “It’s gone; did you see it?”

“A loose page, miss?” said Nolan, with some concern.  “Oh, yes, miss; I was going to tell you; there was a scrap of paper blew away when I was passing between the carriages.  Was it something you wanted, miss?”

“Something I wanted!” exclaimed Miss Morris, in dismay.

Carlton laughed easily.  “It is just as well I didn’t sign it, after all,” he said.  “I don’t want to proclaim my devotion to any Hungarian gypsy who happens to read English.”

“You must draw me another, as a souvenir,” Miss Morris said.

Nolan continued on through the length of the car until he had reached the one occupied by the Hohenwalds, where he waited on the platform until the English maidservant saw him and came to the door of the carriage.

“What hotel are your people going to stop at in Constantinople?” Nolan asked.

“The Grande-Bretagne, I think,” she answered.

“That’s right,” said Nolan, approvingly.  “That’s the one we are going to.  I thought I would come and tell you about it.  And, by-the-way,” he said, “here’s a picture somebody’s made of your Princess Aline.  She dropped it, and I picked it up.  You had better give it back to her.  Well,” he added, politely, “I’m glad you are coming to our hotel in Constantinople; it’s pleasant having some one to talk to who can speak your own tongue.”

The girl returned to the car, and left Nolan alone upon the platform.  He exhaled a long breath of suppressed excitement, and then gazed around nervously upon the empty landscape.

“I fancy that’s going to hurry things up a bit,” he murmured, with an anxious smile; “he’d never get along at all if it wasn’t for me.”

For reasons possibly best understood by the German ambassador, the state of the Hohenwalds at Constantinople differed greatly from that which had obtained at the French capital.  They no longer came and went as they wished, or wandered through the show-places of the city like ordinary tourists.  There was, on the contrary, not only a change in their manner towards others, but there was an insistence on their part of a difference in the attitude of others towards themselves.  This showed itself in the reserving