"Is the Duke of Hohenwald stopping at your hotel?" he asked. The bareheaded man answered that he was.
"All right, Nolan," cried Carlton. "They can take in the trunks."
Hearing this, the bareheaded man hastened to help Carlton to alight. "That was the Duke who just drove off, sir; and those," he said, pointing to three muffled figures who were stepping into a second carriage, "are his sisters, the Princesses."
Carlton stopped midway, with one foot on the step and the other in the air.
"The deuce they are!" he exclaimed; "and which is--" he began, eagerly, and then remembering himself, dropped back on the cushions of the hansom.
He broke into the little dining-room at Cox's in so excited a state that two dignified old gentlemen who were eating there sat open-mouthed in astonished disapproval. Mrs. Downs and Miss Morris had just come down stairs.
"I have seen her!" Carlton cried, ecstatically; "only half an hour in the town, and I've seen her already!"
"No, really?" exclaimed Miss Morris. "And how did she look? Is she as beautiful as you expected?"
"Well, I can't tell yet," Carlton answered.
"There were three of them, and they were all muffled up, and which one of the three she was I don't know. She wasn't labelled, as in the picture, but she was there, and I saw her. The woman I love was one of that three, and I have engaged rooms at the hotel, and this very night the same roof shelters us both."