brunt of anxiety fell on poor Sergeant Ney. Here was a young soldier whom a month before Louis Napoleon had 5summoned to the Tuileries, to charge him with the lady’s safe return to Maximilian’s court in the City of Mexico, where she was First Dame of Honor about the Empress Charlotte. The order was not a military one, else it must have fallen to an officer of rank. It was not even official. But no doubt it enfolded more of weight for that very reason. Napoleon III. believed that in the unofficial, in littleness and dark gliding, lay the way to govern a state. Michel Ney regarded his task as a complete enigma. He had only to see a girl to the end of her journey. He was a slow-thinking, even a non-thinking agent, but in a contingency he could fight, still without thinking.

The girl under his escort, however, was another sort of agent entirely. She was the spirit of the enigma, the very personification of the Napoleonic sphinx. She was the Imperial Secret flung a thousand leagues, there to work itself out alone in a new land of empire. Two months ago Louis Napoleon had recalled her from the Mexican court to her old circle, to the Tuileries, to St. Cloud, to Compiègne, and almost at once he had sent her back again. This time she came with the sphinx’s purpose.

Getting himself into the small boat, Ney stole a glance at the gray eyes opposite him–for the moment they were gray, as well as treacherously innocent and pensive–and he reflected woefully that she had quite too much spirit altogether for an Egyptian dame of stone. She was making it very hard for him. What caprice might not possess her while on shore, and the ship to sail within a few hours? It was not a predicament for sabre play. And he made the mistake of trying to wield his wits a little.

“I should take it as an honor, mademoiselle,” he faltered, “I should, truly, if you’d only believe that I would impose my escort for the pleasure it gives me, as well as–as well as––”

But she did not seem to notice that he stumbled. Her 6eyes were intent on the green water, which the oars transmuted into eddying crystals. He would go on, she knew, and lay more exposed the place where she meant to strike. She had coquetted with him, old play fellow that he was, for just a little during the voyage, as with others too, for that matter. But she had tired of it, as she had also of the chagrin of wives and sweethearts on board, or as she had of Hugo’s “Napoleon le Petit,” which she read purely out of contrariness to the censorship laid on the exiled poet. Michel Ney, however, and this she noted carefully, now kept close within his soldier’s shell. He had that unofficial duty to think on, which was enough and over.

“––as well as,” he finished desperately, “as a duty to an authority over us both. If you would believe that, mademoiselle?”

Then she struck. A word sufficed. “Oh, Monsieur the Sergeant!” she exclaimed. Her tone was deprecating, but she lingered wickedly on the title. The young Frenchman looked down on his natty uniform. No other cut or cloth in the whole imperial army of France was more dashing than the sky-blue of a Chasseur d’Afrique, but none of that filled Michel’s eyes. For him there were only the worsted stripes. He colored and winced.

“Forgive me,” she said meekly, “I should have said, ‘Monsieur the Duke.’”

The Chasseur flushed like a boy. “Why will you harp on what a grandfather made me?” he blurted out. “And what’s a duke––?”

“And a prince?–the Prince of Moskowa!” She courtesied from her slender waist.

“Alas for my blunders,” she sighed, “for it was more delicate after all to call you sergeant. In that I congratulate you yourself, Michel, and never a grandfather.”

Ney frowned unhappily. “The first prince of Moskowa 7was once a