Have you any money at all now, Mimo ?" "Indeed, yes!" And Count Sykypri proudly drew forth eight bits of French gold from his pocket.

"We had two hundred francs when we arrived.

Our little necessities and a few paints took up two of the twenty-franc pieces, and we have eight of them left! Oh, quite a fortune! It will keep us until I can sell the 'Apache.' I shall take it to a picture dealer's to-morrow." Countess Shulski's heart sank.

She knew so well of old how long eight twenty-franc pieces would be likely to last! In spite of Mirko's care and watching of his father that gentleman was capable of giving one of them to a beggar if the beggar's face and story touched him, and any of the others could go in a present to Mirko or herself--to be pawned later, when necessity called.

The case was hopeless as far as money was concerned with Count Sykypri.
Her own meager income, derived from the dead Shulski, was always forestalled for the wants of the family--the little brother whom she had promised her dead and adored mother never to desert.
For when the beautiful wife of Maurice Grey, the misanthropic and eccentric Englishman who lived in a castle near Prague, ran off with Count Mimo Sykypri, her daughter, then aged thirteen, had run with her, and the pair had been wiped off the list of the family.