"The Princess Margaretta--who, as all the world knows, is staying at the 'Parade Hotel'?"
"I hope not--I do hope not. I hope she's not gone so far as the Princess Margaretta."
The little man wrung his hands together as if he were positively suffering pain.
"The Princess did say that her late husband's name was Dowsett. Perhaps you are a relation of his?"
"Her late husband! I'm her present husband, if it's Mrs Dowsett. But perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me what kind of party the Princess Margaretta is--I mean to look at."
I told him. I described the Princess's many charms. I spoke of her glorious hair, her great blue eyes, her irresistible smile, her exquisite figure, her bearing of great lady. I did not do her justice--who can do a beautiful woman justice by a mere description?--but I apparently did her sufficient justice to enable him to recognise the picture I had drawn. When I had finished, that little man dropped into a chair with what sounded to me very like a cry of anguish.
"It's Eliza!" That is how he referred to the Princess Margaretta--the, as she had given me to understand, near relation to the Romanoffs, the reigning Russian family. "She's done it again! And worse than ever!--After all she promised!"
When I understood what his broken exclamations might mean, I began to perspire.
"I fear that you and I, sir, are at cross purposes. May I ask you to explain! And, first of all, be so good as to tell me who you are."
"That's me." He took from his pocket a card, a common tradesman's card, on which was printed "James Dowsett. Grocer and General Provision Merchant," with an address at Islington. "That's me," he repeated with an air of positive pride, "that's who I am. And I'll do you as good a tea at one and ten as you'll get anywhere in London, though I say it."