"And now you will settle down, dearest, won't you, and drop all this speculation and money-making?"
"Yes, no more 'systems' for me. First settle up, then settle down. We must bolt out of London, anyhow."
"Why, grandpapa? We are safe for six months yet, if you keep quiet."
"I haven't kept quiet," he acknowledged frankly. "You'd better hear the truth. I'm in a very awkward position."
"Tell me everything, grandpapa. I can bear it."
"Well, I met her in Paris."
"Grandpapa! Another?"
"Listen. I met the woman in Paris. She was a Russian princess, stopping at the Hotel Bristol. She could speak English--worse luck. So we got on. No side at all about her. Let me take her everywhere and pay. One of those golden-haired, expensive women, but beautiful as a dream. Her husband still lives somewhere in Russia. He had a row with the Czar about her. She was nobody herself. They were separated through no fault of hers. She couldn't stand him because he funked the Czar. Plucky little woman; coming over to this country to play the harp at the music-halls. We're engaged."
"Grandpapa!"
"Don't criticise, I can't stand it to-day. She's called the Princess Hopskipchoff. She said it was the dream of her life to marry me; that she's seen me in her sleep and that a fortune-teller, now in Siberia, had accurately described me to her years ago. She's twenty-five and true as steel. Socially it would have been a step in the right direction, though Russian Princesses are rather a drug in the market. But I can't marry her, of course. I've thought better of it since we parted, and I've had time to do up my accounts."