Chapter 5 - Page 2

dance."

"You are ungrateful, Katherine. Remember he introduced you to the Prince."

"Yes, that's so. I had forgotten. I shall never say anything against him again."

"You like the Prince, then?"

"Of all the crowned heads, emperors, kings, sultans, monarchs of every description, dukes, counts, earls, marquises, whom I have met, and who have pestered my life asking me to share their royal perquisites, I think I may say quite truthfully that I like this Jack Lamont better than any one of them."

"Surely Prince Jack has not offered you his principality already?"

"No, not yet, but with an eye to the future I have persuaded him to give up Tolstoi and read Mark Twain, who is not only equally humorous, but much more sensible than the Russian writer. Jack must not be allowed to give away his estates to the peasants as his silly sister has done. I may need them later on."

"Oh, you've got that far, have you?"

"I have got that far: he hasn't. He doesn't know anything about it, but I'll wake him up when the right time comes. There are many elements of sanity about him. He told me that he intended to give up his estates, but in the first place he had been too busy, and in the second he needed the money. His good sense, however, requires refining, so that he may get rid of the dross. I don't blame him; I blame Tolstoi. For instance, when I asked him if he had patented his liquid city invention, he said he did not wish to make a profit from his discovery, but intended it for the good of humanity at large. Imagine such an idiotic idea as that!"

"I think such views are entirely to his credit," alarmed Dorothy.

"Oh, of course, but the plan is not practicable. If he allows such an invention to slip through his fingers, the Standard Oil people will likely get hold of it, form a monopoly, and then where would humanity at large be? I tell him the right way is to patent it, make all the money he can, and use the cash for benefiting humanity under the direction of some charitable person like myself."

"Did you suggest that to him?"

"I did not intimate who the sensible person was, but I elucidated the principle of the thing."

"Yes, and what did he say?"

"Many things, Dorothy, many things. At one time he became confidential about his possessions in foreign lands. It seems he owns several castles, and when he visits any of them he cannot prevent the moujiks, if that is the proper term for the peasantry over there, from prostrating themselves on the ground as he passes by, beating their foreheads against the earth, and chanting, in choice Russian, the phrase: 'Defer, defer, here comes the Lord High Executioner,' or words to that effect. I told him I didn't see why he should interfere with so