Ch. 8: Jennie Mixes with the Elite of Earth - Page 2

foliage, was rendering in masterly manner, led by the most famous impressario of the day. The remote probability of meeting anyone here who knew the Princess reassured her, and there speedily came over her a sense of delight in all the kaleidoscopic bewilderment of this great entertainment. She saw that each one there had interest in someone else, and, to her great relief, found herself left entirely alone with reasonable assurance that this remoteness would continue to befriend her until the final gauntlet of leave-taking had to be run; a trial still to be encountered, the thought of which she resolutely put away from her, trusting to the luck that had hitherto not deserted her.

Jennie was in this complaisant frame of mind when she was suddenly startled by a voice at her side.

"Ah, Princess, I have been searching everywhere for you, catching glimpses of you now and then, only to lose you, as, alas, has been my fate on more serious occasion. May I flatter myself with the belief that you also remember?"

There was no recognition in the large frightened eyes that were turned upon him. They saw a young man bowing low over the unresisting hand he had taken. His face was clear-cut and unmistakably English. Jennie saw his closely-cropped auburn head, and, as it raised until it overtopped her own, the girl, terrified as she was, could not but admire the sweeping blonde moustache that overshadowed a smile, half-wistful, half-humorous, which lighted up his handsome face. The ribbon of some order was worn athwart his breast; otherwise he wore court dress, which well became his stalwart frame.

"I am disconsolate to see that I am indeed forgotten, Princess, and so another cherished delusion fades away from me."

Her fan concealed the lower part of the girl's face, and she looked at him over its fleecy semicircle.

"Put not your trust in princesses," she murmured, a sparkle of latent mischief lighting up her eyes.

The young man laughed. "Indeed," he said, "had I served my country as faithfully as I have been true to my remembrance of you, Princess, I would have been an ambassador long ere this, covered with decorations. Have you then lost all recollection of that winter in Washington five years ago; that whirlwind of gaiety which ended by wafting you away to a foreign country, and thus the eventful season clings to my memory as if it were a disastrous western cyclone? Is it possible that I must re-introduce myself as Donal Stirling?"

"Not Lord Donal Stirling?" asked Jennie, dimly remembering that she had heard this name in connection with something diplomatic, and her guess that he was in that service was strengthened by his previous remark about being an ambassador.

"Yes, Lord Donal, if you will cruelly insist on calling me so; but this cannot take from me the consolation that once, in the