Amory, left in the middle of the great room, stood polishing his pince-nez exactly as if he had been waiting at the end of Chillingworth's desk of a bright, American morning.
"If I didn't know anything about it," he said cheerfully, "I should say that he had. As it is, having this afternoon watched a certain motor wear its way past me, I should say that nothing in Yaque is more unlikely. And that's about as strong as you could put it."
"We don't know what the man may have threatened," said St. George morosely, "he may have played upon her devotion to her father to some ridiculous extent. He may have refused to land the submarine at Yaque at all otherwise--"
St. George broke off suddenly.
"Toby!" he said.
Amory looked over and nodded. He had seen that look before on St. George's face.
"She's not going to marry the prince," said St. George, "and if her father is alive and in a hole, he's going to be pulled out. And she's not going to marry the prince."
"Why, no," assented Amory, "no."
He had guessed a good deal of the truth since he had been watching St. George flee over seas upon a yacht, shod, so to speak, with fire, and he had arrived at the suspicion that The Aloha was winged by little Loves and guided under water by plenty of blue and green dragons. But he had not, until now, been thoroughly certain that St. George's spirit of adventure had another name; and though theoretically his sympathies leaped to the look in his friend's eyes, yet he found himself wondering practically what effect romance would be having upon their enterprise. After all, from a newspaper point of view, to relinquish any part of the adventure was a kind of tragedy, and it cost Amory something to emphasize his assent.
"Of course she won't," he said, "and now let's toddle down and see about it."
When the tread of the feet of a detachment of the Royal Golden Guard was heard without, Rollo advanced to the door with a dignity which amounted to melancholy. The setting of a palace and the proximity of a prince had raised his office to the majesty of skilled labour. He always threw open the door now as who should say, "Enter. But mind you have a reason."
At sight of the long liberty of the corridor where the light lay mysteriously touching tiles and tapestries to festal colours, Amory's spirits rose contagiously, and his eyes shone behind his pince-nez.
"Me," he said, looking ahead with enjoyment at the glittering escort, "me--done in a fabric of about the eleventh shade of the Yaque spectrum--made loose and floppy, after a modish Canaanitish model. I'll wager that when the first-born of Canaan was in the flood-tide of glory, this very gown was worn by one of the most beautiful women in the pentapolis of Philistia. I'm going to photograph the model for the Sunday supplement, and name it The Nebuchadnezzar."