"Can you love me?" he interrupted.

For answer she bent her head. Next moment his lips met hers in a hot pa.s.sionate caress. And thus did their hearts beat in unison.

Before they rose from the seat Mary Jesup had promised to become Princess of Hesse-Holstein.

Next morning, the happy girl told her mother the gratifying news, and when Mrs Jesup entered the Prince's private _salon_ his Highness asked her, at least for the present, to keep their engagement secret.

That day the Prince was occupied by a quant.i.ty of correspondence, but the future Princess, after a tender kiss upon her white brow, went out in the car with her mother as far as Bognor. Two hours later the Prince sent a telegram to the Rev Thomas Clayton, despatched Charles post-haste to London by the Pullman express, and then went out for a stroll along King's Road.

He was one of the happiest men in all the world.

Not until dinner did he again meet Mrs Jesup and her daughter. After describing what an excellent run they had had, the millionaire's wife said:

"Oh, Mary has been telling me something about a mysterious fair-haired man whom you say has been watching her."

"Yes," replied his Highness. "He's been hanging about for some days. I fancy he's no good--one of those fellows who live in hotels on the look-out for pigeons."

"What we call in America a crook--eh?"

"Exactly. At least that's my opinion," he declared in confidence.

Mrs Jesup and her daughter appeared both very uneasy, a circ.u.mstance which the Prince did not fail to notice. They went up to his _salon_ where they had coffee, and then retired early.

Half an hour later, while his Highness was lazily enjoying one of his brown "Petroffs," the millionaire's wife, with blanched face, burst into the room crying:

"Prince! Oh, Prince! The whole of my jewels and Mary's have been stolen! Both cases have been broken open and the contents gone! My pearls too! What shall we do?" His Highness started to his feet astounded. "Do? Why find that fair-haired man!" he replied. "I'll go at once to the manager." He sped downstairs, and all was quickly in confusion. The manager recollected the man, who had given the name of Mason, and who had left suddenly on the previous morning. The police were telephoned for, and over the wires to London news of the great jewel robbery was flashed to New Scotland Yard.

There was little sleep for either of the trio that night. Examination showed that whoever the thief was, he had either been in possession of the keys of the ladies' trunks, wherein were the jewel-cases, or had obtained impressions of them, for after the jewels had been abstracted the trunks had been relocked.

The Prince was very active, while the two ladies and their maid were in utter despair. Their only consolation was that, though Mary had lost her diamonds, she had gained a husband.

About noon on the following day, while his Highness was reading the paper as he lolled lazily in the depths of the big armchair, a tap came at the door and a waiter ushered in a thin, spare, grey-faced, grey-bearded man.

The Prince sprang to his feet as though he had received an electric shock.

The two men faced each other, both utterly dumbfounded.

"Wal!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the visitor at last, when he found tongue. "If this don't beat hog-stickin'! Say, young Tentoes, do you know I'm Robert K.

Jesup?"

"You--Jesup! My dear Uncle Jim!" gasped the other. "What does this mean?"

"Yes. Things in New York over that little poker job are a bit hot just now, so Lil and the old Lady are working the matrimonial trick this side--a spoony jay, secret engagement, and blackmail. Worked it in Paris two years ago. Great success! Done neatly, it's real good. I thought they'd got hold of a real live prince this time--and rushed right here to find it's only you! They ought really to be more careful!"

"And I tell you, uncle, I too have been completely deceived. I thought I'd got a soft thing--those Bourbon pearls, you know? They left their keys about, I got casts, and when they were out bagged the boodle."

"Wal, my boy, you'd better cough 'em up right away," urged the old American criminal, whose name was Ford, and who was known to his a.s.sociates as "Uncle Jim."

"I suppose the Parson's in it, as usual--eh? Say! the whole lot of sparklers aren't worth fifty dollars, but the old woman and the girl look well in 'em. My! ain't we all been taken in finely! Order me a c.o.c.ktail to take the taste away. Guess Lil'll want to twist your rubber-neck when she sees you, so you'd better get into that famous car of yours and make yourself scarce, young man!"

The _Suss.e.x Daily News_ next morning contained the following announcement:

"His Royal Highness Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein has left Brighton for the Continent."

CHAPTER TWO.

THE PRINCE AND THE PARSON.

His Royal Highness descended from the big cream-coloured "Mercedes" in the Place Royale, drew off his gloves, and entered the quiet, eminently aristocratic Hotel de l'Europe.

All Brussels knew that Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein was staying there. Hence, as the car pulled up, and the young man in long dust-coat and motor-goggles rose from the wheel and gave the car over to the smart chauffeur Garrett in the grey uniform with crimson facings, a small crowd of gaping idlers a.s.sembled to watch his entrance to the hotel. In the hall a few British tourists in tweeds or walking-skirts stared at him, as though a real live prince was of different clay, while on ascending the main staircase to his private suite, two waiters bowed themselves almost in two.

In his sitting-room his middle-aged English man-servant was arranging his newspapers, and closing the door sharply behind him he said: "Charles! That girl is quite a sweet little thing. I've seen her again!"

"And your Highness has fallen in love with her?" sniffed the man.

"Well, I might, Charles. One never knows." And he took a "Petroff"

from the big silver box, and lit it with care. "I am very lonely, you know."

Charles's lips relaxed into a smile, but he made no remark. He was well aware how confirmed was his master's bachelordom. He often admired pretty girls, just as much as they adored him--because he was a prince-- but his admiration was tinged with the acidity of sarcasm.

When Charles had gone, his Highness flung off his motor-coat and threw himself into a big chair to think. With a smart rat-a-plan, an infantry regiment of _les braves Belges_ was crossing the Place to relieve the guard at the Palace. He rose and gazed across the square:

"Ah!" he laughed to himself, "my dear uncle, the Red Rubber King, is closely guarded, it seems! I suppose I ought to call upon him. He's at home, judging from the royal standard. Whew! What a bore it is to have been born a prince! If I'd been a policeman or a pork-butcher I daresay I'd have had a much better time. The world never guesses how badly we fellows are handicapped. Men like myself cannot cross the road without some scoundrelly journalist working up a `royal scandal' or a political complication."

Then his thoughts ran off into another direction--the direction in which they had constantly flowed during the past week--towards a certain very charming, sweet-faced girl, scarcely out of her teens, who was staying with her father and mother at the Grand Hotel, down on the boulevard.

The Northovers were English--decidedly English. They were of that insular type who, in a Continental hotel, demand bacon and eggs for breakfast, denounce every dish as a "foreign mess," and sigh for the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding of middle-cla.s.s suburbia. James Northover, Charles had discovered to be a very estimable and trusted person, manager of the Stamford branch of the London and North Western Bank, who was now tasting the delights of Continental travel by three weeks' vacation in Belgium. His wife was somewhat obese and rather strong-minded, while little Nellie was decidedly pretty, her light brown hair dressed low and secured by a big black velvet bow, a pair of grey, rather mischievous eyes, sweetly dimpled cheeks, and a perfect complexion. Not yet nineteen, she had only left the High School a year before, and was now being afforded an opportunity of inflicting her school-girl French upon all and sundry with whom she came into contact.

And it was French--French with those p.r.o.nounced "ong" and "onny" endings for which the tourist-agents are so terribly responsible.

But with all her linguistical shortcomings little Nelly Northover, the slim-waisted school-miss with the tiny wisp of unruly hair straying across her brow, and the rather smart and intelligent chatter, had attracted him. Indeed, he could not get the thought of her out of his head.

They had met at a little inn at the village of Anseremme, on the Meuse, close to Dinant--that paradise of the cheap "hotel-included" tourist.

Something had gone wrong with the clutch of his car, and he had been held up there for two days while an engineer had come out from Brussels to repair the damage. Being the only other guest in the place beside the eminently respectable bank manager and his wife and daughter, he lost no time in ingratiating himself with them, and more especially with the last-named.

Though he spoke English perfectly and with but the very slightest accent, he had given his name at the inn as Herr Birkenfeld, for was not that one of his names? He was Count of Birkenfeld, and seigneur of a dozen other places, in addition to being Prince of the royal house of Hesse-Holstein. The bank manager and his wife, of course, believed him to be a young German gentleman of means until, on the morning of the day of his departure, Charles, in greatest confidence, revealed to them who his master really was.

The English trio were utterly staggered. To Nellie, there was an element of romance at meeting a real prince in those rural solitudes of river and forest. As she declared to her mother, he was so nice and so una.s.suming. Just, indeed, like any ordinary man.

And in her young mind she compared Albert Prince of Hesse-Holstein with the provincial young gentlemen whom she had met last season at the popular county function, the Stamford Ball.

As constantly Nellie Northover's thoughts reverted to the affable prince, so did his Highness, on his part, sit hour upon hour smoking his pet Russian cigarettes in quick succession, pondering and wondering.

His position was one of terrible weariness. Ah! how often he wished that he had not been born a prince. As an ordinary mortal he might have dared to aspire to the hand of the sweet young English miss. But as Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein, such a marriage would be denounced by press and public as a _misalliance_.

He liked James Northover. There was something of the John Bull about him which he admired. A keen, hard-headed business man, tall and bald, who spoke with a Nottingham brogue, and who had been over thirty years in the service of the bank, he was a highly trusted servant of his directors. In allowing overdrafts he seldom made mistakes, while his courtesy had brought the bank a considerably increased business.