"Prince Tabnit," said St. George, "I beg you not to jest with us. Have consideration for the two to whom this man is dear."
"I am speaking truth to you," said the prince earnestly. "I do not wish to alarm these ladies, but I am bound in honour to tell you what I know."
"Ah then," said St. George, his narrowed eyes meeting those of the prince, "since the taking of life is unknown to you in Yaque, will you explain how it was that your servant adopted such unerring means to take the life of Miss Holland? And why?"
"My servant," said the prince readily, "belongs to the lahnas or former serfs of the island. Upon her people, now the owners of rich lands, the tax will fall heavily. Crazed by what she considers her people's wrongs following upon the coming of the stranger sovereign, the poor creature must have developed the primitive instincts of your race. Before coming to this country my servant had never heard of murder save as a superseded custom of antiquity, like the crucifying of lions. Her discovery of your daily practice of murder, and of murder practised as a cure for crime--"
"Sir," began the lawyer imposingly.
"--wakened in her the primitive instincts of humanity, and her instinct took the deplorable and fanatic form of your own courts," finished the prince. "Her bitterness toward his Majesty she sought to visit upon his daughter."
Olivia sprang to her feet.
"I must go to my father. I must go to Yaque," she cried ringingly. "Prince Tabnit, will you take me to him?"
Into the prince's face leaped a fire of admiration for her beauty and her daring. He bowed before her, his lowered lashes making thick shadows on his dark cheeks.
"I insist upon this," cried little Olivia firmly, "and if you do not permit it, Prince Tabnit, we must publish what you have told us from one end of the city to the other."
"Yes, by Jove," thought St. George, "and one's country will have a Yaque exhibit in its own department at the next world's fair."
"Olivia! My child! Miss Holland--," began the lawyer.
The prince spoke tranquilly.
"It is precisely this errand," he said, "that has brought me to America. Do you not see that, in the event of your father's failure to return to his people, you will eventually be Queen of Yaque?"
St. George found himself looking fixedly at Mrs. Hastings' false front as the only reality in the room. If in a minute Rollo was going to waken him by bringing in his coffee, he was going to throttle Rollo--that was all. Olivia Holland, an American heiress, the hereditary princess of a cannibal island! St. George still insisted upon the cannibal; it somehow gave him a foothold among the actualities.