THE GAME AND THE CANDLE

By ELEANOR M. INGRAM

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
P. D. JOHNSON

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1909
The Bobbs-merrill Company

October

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

TO THAT GRACIOUS FAMILY
CIRCLE OF WHICH I HAVE
THE HAPPINESS TO BE ONE

He carried her back to the cream-tinted boudoir.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. The Decision
CHAPTER II. The Key to the Door
CHAPTER III. His Royal Highness
CHAPTER IV. The Bond
CHAPTER V. The New Day
CHAPTER VI. "The King is Dead—Long Live the King"
CHAPTER VII. Allegiance
CHAPTER VIII. To Meet the Emperor
CHAPTER IX. Guinevere of the South
CHAPTER X. A Stanief's Own
CHAPTER XI. In the Regent's Study
CHAPTER XII. The Turn in the Road
CHAPTER XIII. The Intervention of Adrian
CHAPTER XIV. The Ordeal
CHAPTER XV. At the Gates of Change
CHAPTER XVI. Fire Lilies
CHAPTER XVII. An Arabian Night
CHAPTER XVIII. The Last Week
CHAPTER XIX. Adrian's Day
CHAPTER XX. Closed

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

He carried her back to the cream-tinted boudoir.

Allard remained silent, regarding her.

"Come in, Officer," Stanief invited pleasantly.

"Will you ride with me, Monseigneur?"

There existed no one else for either.

THE GAME AND THE CANDLE

CHAPTER I

THE DECISION

"It will last about six months," stated John Allard. "Afterward—"

His brother looked up at him helplessly.

"Afterward?" he echoed drearily.

"Afterward there must be more. It is not possible, simply is not, for poverty to approach Theodora and Aunt Rose. Look around you, Robert."

Under the clear California moonlight the jade-green lawns and terraces dropped one below the other to the distant road. Through them writhed the long serpentine drive and paths; dotted over them stood dark masses of flowering bushes or trees, with here and there the snowy gleam of a statue; over all floated the rhythmic tinkle of the central fountain. Untroubled calm was the spirit of the place, hereditary comfort.

"I have looked so often, John. Yet, I find nothing."

"We must find not a little money, but a fortune, and we must find it in six months," John answered, his low voice just reaching his listener. "There is no way to earn it, we know. Inside the law there are ways to acquire it. Wall Street, for instance; a new popular song or two, an inexplicable conjuring trick, or a fresh breakfast food. But we have no such talents, you and I; we are just the ordinary gentlemen of leisure,—dilettanti. We are useless, within the limits set for us. Outside the limits, outside the law—"

The suggestion was left unfinished, the two men falling silent before it. They were young; so young that the morning mists of romance still blurred