—"and to faithfully fight in my lady's cause"
As he finished the repetition, she added: "Arise, vassal!"
With the spirit of the ceremony, he jestingly caught her hand and kissed it, as he arose. She drew back sharply.
"That is part of the ceremony, but I meant to omit it."
Warren Jarvis laughed provokingly.
"That seemed to me the only sensible part of it—again I beg your pardon. But who on earth is this Maria Theresa of Aragon person whose hired man I have become?"
The girl drew herself up with a hauteur which could never have been imitated upon the stage. Her dark eyes glinted coldly as she replied: "I—I am her Serene Highness—Maria Theresa—Princess of Aragon!"
Jarvis looked at her, waiting for the cue to the joke. She was serious. It was all so unreal, so ridiculous—and yet back there on the floor of the room down the corridor lay Jim Marcum. This mad, sad, heart-rending, adventure must have driven him to insanity. He rubbed his brow, looked out of the window, heard the unromantic honk-honk of a piratical night-owl taxicab on the street so far below. He steadied his mental equilibrium, and looked again at the self-possessed young woman, whose regal manner was as convincing as all the other details were unconvincing. On the table lay a fortune in jewels and rings and a necklace. He had not noticed them before. He remembered the Spanish conversation which he had heard through the bathroom door. He realized from the size and elegance of the rooms that this must indeed be a regal suite in the great hotel.
And the girl's steady look never wavered.