be left—I, Rupert Hentzau, and you, the King of Ruritania."
He paused, and then, in a voice that quivered with eagerness, added:
"Isn't that a hand to play?—a throne and yon princess! And for me, say a competence and your Majesty's gratitude."
"Surely," I exclaimed, "while you're above ground hell wants its master!"
"Well, think it over," he said. "And, look you, it would take more than a scruple or two to keep me from yonder girl," and his evil eyes flashed again at her I loved.
"Get out of my reach!" said I; and yet in a moment I began to laugh for the very audacity of it.
"Would you turn against your master?" I asked.
He swore at Michael for being what the offspring of a legal, though morganatic, union should not be called, and said to me in an almost confidential and apparently friendly tone:
"He gets in my way, you know. He's a jeal-
