"Ah, very well," he said briefly, "we will visit the prince."
"Farewell, adôn," said Jarvo, bowing low, "may the gods permit the possible."
"Of course you will communicate with us to-morrow," suggested St. George, "so that if we wish to send Rollo down to the yacht--"
"The gods will permit the possible, adôn," Jarvo repeated gently.
There was a flash of Akko's white teeth and the two little men were gone.
St. George and Amory turned to the descending of the wide white steps. Such immense, impossible white steps and such a curious place for these two to find themselves, alone, with a valet. Struck by the same thought they looked at each other and nodded, laughing a little.
"Alone in the distance," said Amory, emptying his pipe, "and not a cab to be seen."
Rollo thrust forward his lean, shadowed face.
"Shall I look about for a 'ansom, sir?" he inquired with perfect gravity.
St. George hardly heard.
"It's like cutting into a great, smooth sheet of white paper," he said whimsically, "and making any figure you want to make."
Before they reached the bottom of the steps they divined, issuing from an isolated, temple-seeming building below, a train of sober-liveried attendants, all at first glance resembling Jarvo and Akko. These defiled leisurely toward the strangers and lined up irregularly at the foot of the steps.
"Enter Trouble," said Amory happily.
They found themselves confronting, in the midst of the attendants, an olive man with no angles, whose face, in spite of its health and even wealth of contour, was ridiculously grave, as if the papier-mâché man in the down-town window should have had a sudden serious thought just before his papier-mâché incarnation.
"Permit me," said the man in perfect English and without bowing, "to bring to you the greeting of his Highness, Prince Tabnit, and his welcome to Yaque. I am Cassyrus, an officer of the government. At the command of his Highness I am come to conduct you to the palace."
"The prince is most kind," said St. George, and added eagerly: "He is returned, then?"
"Assuredly. Three days ago," was the reply.
"And the king--is he returned?" asked St. George.
The man shook his head, and his very anxiety seemed important.
"His Majesty, the King," he affirmed, "is still most lamentably absent from his throne and his people."
"And his daughter?" demanded St. George then, who could not possibly have waited an instant longer to put that question.
"The daughter of his Majesty, the King," said Cassyrus, looking still more as if he were having his portrait painted, "will in three days be recognized publicly as Princess of Yaque."