houses, gray streets, and limp and dusty trees. The cabs, like so many millermoths settled near a lamp, were wickerbodied victorias under white cloth canopies, and the drivers wore white bellcrowned hats. The drive to the hotel showed that Sebastopol was beautiful, but to our ladies it was like getting back to Greece, and they determined to press onward. They found that the Grand-Duchess Olga was to sail next day for Yalta and Batoum, and they at once engaged passage. On her deck the task of watching to see their baggage put aboard was given to Miss Ethel, who was presently interested in the foreign travellers, their leave-takings, in which the men kissed each other on both cheeks, and the bustle at the gang-plank. Suddenly a fragment of conversation interested her.

"He's a prince," she heard a man say in English-and she forgot the foreign scenes, and even her anxiety about the baggage.

Two Englishmen had been bidding good-by to two Russian-looking men, who now came up the plank to the deck, leaving the Englishmen on the wharf. Miss Ethel saw that the voyagers were an elderly, smooth-shaven, black-haired man, who walked slowly and weakly, like an invalid, and a tall, sandy-bearded man of thirty who followed, carrying a sword, an umbrella, and some walking-sticks tied together.

"Bon voyage," called out one of the Englishmen, adding, in a lower tone: "Queer, isn't it? One would naturally say, 'He's going with a prince,' but, on the contrary, a prince is going with him."

Prince, eh?" the other repeated, questioningly.

"Yes; a Georgian prince; with a family older than any in Europe, of course. All those Georgian families date back to King David, or to some Chinese emperor of centuries before Christ. He's a genuine prince, though, whatever doubt there may be about a few of the early centuries in his family history. Can't help feeling sorry that and here the men turned, and she heard no more. She glanced at the deck to see the noble, but he-she was sure it was the younger one-had gone below. Presently the baggage came, and in a very few minutes the Grand-Duchess Olga was trembling with the power she exerted in throwing out a lacelike train of white bubbles far behind her.

Miss Ethel annoyed her aunt by opening the bags and trunks to find her bright red Russian blouse -- the newest, most fetching thing she owned-and her bonnet with the red wings, and her gray skirt with the fine stripes. And she spent more than half an hour over her hair and her hands.

"We agreed to wear only our knockabout things on shipboard, Ethel," her aunt said, "and now you're dressing as if for an evening party."

"Oh no, aunty; but it's so warm and summerlike, and the people who are going to Yalta are all so fashionably dressed, I thought I'd put on something cool, and show these Russians that we have nice things as well as they."

"Oh, well, if it's a patriotic matter-" said the elder lady, and there abandoned the sentence. Far from being humbugged, she determined to discover the reason for the sudden fine apparelling of her niece.

Miss Ethel was radiant when she went to the saloon for luncheon. She knew she looked her best, and when even a plain girl has that consciousness, it sets off her good points to advantage. But she was far from plain. She was tall and wellrounded, with a high brow crowning an oval face, with sensitive brown eyes, and fine soft brown hair, an arched nose, and lips so full as to betoken an ardent nature, and yet firm enough to show thorough self-control. Two things about her were eloquent of her 'right to belong to the country that most prizes good women, and has given every one of them a throne. These were her confident carriage, independent without suggesting impudence, and her eyes that flashed every emotion quicker than telegraphy, because there was no waiting to spell out long words like amusement, or sympathy, or intelligence; they were flashed on her quick orbs like magic. Thus her smallest features vitalized and characterized her entire personality.

But even her intelligence did not forearm her for the discovery that all the seats in the dining-saloon were taken. She mentioned this to a waiter and he shrugged his shoulders.

"What shall we do?" she asked her aunt.

"If madame weel assept my place," said a gentleman, rising to put a hand to his breast and make a low courtesy. It

was the prince. Miss Ethel gasped for some polite phrase that was called too suddenly to come.

"Thank you, but one place will scarcely do for two," said the old lady.

"I weel do ze sing," said the prince, and went and got a camp-stool, and bade those who were on either side of him move closer while he squeezed in the extra seat. Then he bowed again and stepped back, and moved the chair and stool while the ladies took their places at the table. And he pushed the chairs under them when they were sitting down; not only that, but he got an extra napkin and opened it, and laid it across Miss Ethel's lap, which was a very peculiar thing, she thought, except that, perhaps, princes were not to be judged by the usages of ordinary folk. Thank you so much," said Miss Ethel; but what will you do?"

"Please, I s'all wait, leetle," said the prince, bowing again, so that his light reddish beard almost touched her back hair.

How polite he is!" said she, when he had taken himself off.

Humph!" said her aunt, and fell to eating her soup. "I think I would almost sooner have waited myself," she added.

"It is too bad," her niece replied. "I mean that I would rather have waited than have had such a fuss-and with such a man."

"Such a- Why, aunt, he's a prince!" "Indeed! He made me creep."

"No; but really, aunty, he is a prince, and of one of the most ancient noble families. I overheard two gentlemen, who were bidding him good-by, talking-I'm sure he was the one they meant-and the one who knew all about him said there was no doubt about his-his royalty, don't you call it?"

"Well," said Mrs. Barrowe, "princes are at a great discount in Greece since the war, and I never was able to see the use of them before that. He may be a prince, but I did not think him much of a man. Bless me! how he must have upset me! I know nothing whatever of the creature-and only hear how I'm going

on!"

I should say so, dear aunt!" Miss Ethel said. "As for me, he's the only prince I ever saw, and I thought him most polite and amiable. He is certainly more unselfish than any other man in all this crowd."

"That is true," said Mrs. Barrowe. "I'll grant that by way of apology. So, let's drop the matter."

They ate in silence, for both found their thoughts engrossing. Miss Ethel was staggered by the good and bad fortune that fell, with two quick strokes, upon her-the good being the meeting with a prince, and the other her aunt's unaccountable, uncharacteristic repugnance to him at first sight. As for the elder lady, she was well pleased with herself for having so quickly discovered why her niece had put on her finery.

The passengers crowded the deck in the afternoon, and the Americans saw many Russian fashionables at their ease. Several young dignitaries lounged about in gold-trimmed suits of pongee silk that needed washing. Many elegantly dressed young ladies, very vain, and swaying between fits of giggling and of petulance, promenaded with their parents, while several of the matrons walked about smoking cigarettes. The men smoked incessantly, and drank almost as constantly. The deck-house was always full of them, behind their glasses of vodka or bottles of wine or bier, each man drinking, unsociably, by himself. When Miss Ethel was about to turn her attention to the cliffs, close to which the ship laid her course, the prince came on deck and bowed to her, and no scenery short of a volcanic eruption could have enlisted her attention.

My description and hers of this nobleman would not seem to be of the same person. She found him about thirty, tall, stately, with a very distinguished carriage, intelligent blue eyes, lovely flaxen hair, a noble head, an aristocratic face, and a silky, ruddy beard. To me he appeared loosely built and awkward, his eyes colorless and too shifting, the back of his head as flat as a drum, and for his beard, hair, and complexion, all three were sandy. But for his title, I should never have noticed him.

He slowly led the way to a seat by the ship's rail for an elderly mau, who was evidently an invalid and of an irritable nature, as his face and the snarl in his voice told all who came near.

"Shall I find you a book, colonel?" the prince inquired.

"Go to the devil!" snarled the sick man. "You are a nuisance."

"I am sorry," said the prince, submissively.

"Well, go away, go away!" growled the invalid, whereupon the prince went and sat in the deck-house behind a bottle of beer, where Miss Ethel saw him as she walked to and fro. She did not hear the conversation between the two men, and if she had, she would not have understood a word.

It was almost dark when the ship reached the beautiful horseshoe-shaped scallop in the hills which is famous as the harbor of Yalta. The hills, always beside the sea, sent their towering sides sheer down to its edge, and were jewelled with a grand monastery here, noble mansions there, and, nearer Yalta, an imperial palace embowered in park foliage. Regretfully the Americans found they were only to make a short night-time stop at this place, to which the noble and rich repair in autumn to eat grapes medicinally, to entertain in châteaux, and to crowd in fashionable hotels. The ladies went ashore and drove beside the curving beach. They mingled with the gay crowd in the largest hotel, heard the band in its garden, and, in a little kiosk over the water's edge, took tea in Russian fashion, in a thin glass on a saucer, with two cubes of sugar, a slice of lemon, and a spoon beside the glass. Perhaps it was the tea that caused the younger lady to lie awake until late in the night trying to picture the prince mingling with the lively, laughing crowds at the main hotel in Yalta, smiled on by haughty women, and deferred to by eminent and masterful men of commoner clay. She wished every one had not left the ship at Yalta, or else that she had left it also.

On the next day, when the ship dropped anchor far beyond a large sprawling yellow town called Kertch, and while Miss Ethel was in a torment lest her aunt should not come on deck in time to catch the tender that was to take them ashore while the ship spent some hours in coaling, who should appear but the prince?

66

'Please," he said, "can I take somesing to you? You are look for somesing -no?"

"Oh, you are so kind!" said she. "I am waiting for my aunt. I thought you had left the steamer at Yalta."

“And you, too, I thought," said he. "I see you not somewhere ever since. But, no, it is that we are both here again -what?"

"The sick gentleman who was with

you," she continued, "he is still on the ship? Yes? I heard it said that he was a prince."

"Please," said he, apologetically, "you have heard what is not. He is a pig, please, or somesing wheech is put to wipe off your feet at ze door, but he is a prince not. He is called Colonel Müller."

"A German name," Miss Ethel remarked.

"But, please, Russia is crowded, much, wiz zose German, also zose French names, though not all belong to pigs."

"You, also, have a German name?" "Please, I have a German name not. My name has much ugliness in English. You will hear it-- what? It is GolaGeorge Theodorus Gola."

She admired his modesty, and still she wanted to hear from his own lips the delicious fact that she was hobnobbing with a prince.

་་

"And I may tell your name-no?" She told him hers, and added, "Yours is a Georgian name, isn't it?"

"It was

"Ah, you know it?" he said. much great, once, for hundreds years— what? But ze Russians swallowed all up the power, and zose wolfs and foxeszose Armenian-zey swallow all up ze money. So now ze name only is remaining."

There is no need to inflict his broken speech upon the reader any longer. It is easier to imagine it. They talked for several minutes before Mrs. Barrowe came on deck dressed to go ashore. Miss Ethel sought to interest the prince in what she knew of the hot yellow city that fringed the distant shore and rose to a point on the side of a hill where a beautiful Greek temple-quite modern-formed the point of the pyramid. She told him that two thousand years ago it used to be Panticapæum, the capital of Bosporia, and that it afterward became Genoese, and then Turkish; but she saw that he did not care. She found it equally idle to describe to him the temples the Greeks built on Mithridates's hill, or the tombs of their kings, or the quantities of relics dug up there-the best of which are in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The prince seemed to know only the modern Greeks, and they, he said, were pigs.

The prince condescended to accompany the ladies ashore, and all three drove over the semi-Oriental town, finding the hilltop view, the open-air market, where the

he came it was evident that he did not seek her; in fact, he seemed bent on re

old church well worth the journey.

It was twenty-four hours later that the Georgian noble and Miss Ethel met for long enough to enjoy a tête-à-tête. Then he found her alone on the deck late in the evening. It may as well be confessed that the young lady had waited all day for the meeting, and being disappointed, had drawn upon a new instalment of patience and waited far into the night. It would not be polite to estimate how of ten she murmured to herself the words "Prince Gola," finding them melodious, and liking to make them familiar. When

ing"; but she talked on and on, and at last interested him. Therefore he sat down and spent an hour with her. It was a veiled reference to her aunt's wealth which proved him a far more sympathetic companion than he had seemed when she baited her hook with classical lore, largely from Murray's Guide to Russia. She had not intended to speak of her aunt's means, and perhaps does not know to this day how much upon that subject the prince managed deftly to draw from her. Nevertheless, by a question now and then, veiled by an air of merely for

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL.

mal politeness, he got

at the fact that the old lady was very rich, and that his companion was the only person the rich old widow cared for in the world. With this knowledge gained the prince went to bed heavy of heart, as one who has scarcely a penny might read of mountains of gold in the moon. On the other hand, the young lady went to her state-room humming a tune so thoughtlessly loud that Mrs. Barrowe was awakened, and gently chid her.

The next sight of Prince Gola that the American ladies

had was only a glimpse of him as he boarded the train at Batoum, at the other end from that at which the ladies found that their own wraps and

rugs and bags had been put by their porters. The guidebooks assert that Batoum prides itself on possessing an avenue of palms that is