"Of all the eyes which witnessed that episode, seemingly so slight and so unimportant," he said, proudly, "mine were the only ones which saw its full significance. Your Highness will, no doubt, be surprised when I inform you that this gentleman, so agile and so athletic, was no other than Lord Vernon!"
CHAPTER VI
The Path Grows Crooked
In the sitting-room of apartment A, in the south wing of the Grand Hôtel Royal, Lord Vernon was tramping nervously up and down while his companions regarded him with evident anxiety.
"I tell you fellows," he was saying, "it can't be kept up—I thought so from the first, but all the rest of you seemed to think it would be so infernally easy that I was ashamed to say anything. I knew something was sure to happen to give us away, and something has happened. What was I to do? Sit there like a mummy and allow that dog to frighten those girls to death? What the deuce are you laughing at, Collins?"
"I'm laughing at your tragic tone. No, you couldn't have sat still—though I don't suppose the young ladies were in any serious danger. They were pretty, no doubt?"
"Ah!" said Vernon, with a mental smacking of the lips at the entrancing picture the words called up.
"That, of course, made it doubly impossible to sit still. Did they know you?"
"Oh, no; never saw me before; hadn't the slightest suspicion that they were talking to such a famous personage. They said they were Americans."
"Then I don't see that any harm has been done."