THE PRISONER OF ZENDA

by Anthony Hope


CONTENTS

[CHAPTER 1 The Rassendylls—With a Word on the Elphbergs]
[CHAPTER 2 Concerning the Colour of Men’s Hair]
[CHAPTER 3 A Merry Evening with a Distant Relative]
[CHAPTER 4 The King Keeps his Appointment]
[CHAPTER 5 The Adventures of an Understudy]
[CHAPTER 6 The Secret of a Cellar]
[CHAPTER 7 His Majesty Sleeps in Strelsau]
[CHAPTER 8 A Fair Cousin and a Dark Brother]
[CHAPTER 9 A New Use for a Tea-Table]
[CHAPTER 10 A Great Chance for a Villain]
[CHAPTER 11 Hunting a Very Big Boar]
[CHAPTER 12 I Receive a Visitor and Bait a Hook]
[CHAPTER 13 An Improvement on Jacob’s Ladder]
[CHAPTER 14 A Night Outside the Castle]
[CHAPTER 15 I Talk with a Tempter]
[CHAPTER 16 A Desperate Plan]
[CHAPTER 17 Young Rupert’s Midnight Diversions]
[CHAPTER 18 The Forcing of the Trap]
[CHAPTER 19 Face to Face in the Forest]
[CHAPTER 20 The Prisoner and the King]
[CHAPTER 21 If Love Were All!]
[CHAPTER 22 Present, Past—and Future?]

CHAPTER 1
The Rassendylls—With a Word on the Elphbergs

“I wonder when in the world you’re going to do anything, Rudolf?” said my brother’s wife.

“My dear Rose,” I answered, laying down my egg-spoon, “why in the world should I do anything? My position is a comfortable one. I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one’s income is ever quite sufficient, you know), I enjoy an enviable social position: I am brother to Lord Burlesdon, and brother-in-law to that charming lady, his countess. Behold, it is enough!”

“You are nine-and-twenty,” she observed, “and you’ve done nothing but—”

“Knock about? It is true. Our family doesn’t need to do things.”