sum for any one to pay for a wife with such a dowry."

"Have you any one in your mind?" he asked.

The Princess nodded.

"I have a friend in Paris who is making some cautious inquiries," she
answered. "I am expecting to hear from her in the course of a few days."

"So far," he remarked, "you have made nothing out of your guardianship
except a living allowance."

She nodded.

"And a ridiculously small one," she remarked. "All that I have had is
two thousand a year. I need not tell you, my dear Nigel, that that does
not go very far when it has to provide dresses and servants and a home
for both of us. Jeanne is content, and never grumbles, or her lawyers
might ask some very inconvenient questions."

"Supposing," he asked, "that she won't have anything to do with this
man, when you have found one who is willing to pay?"

"Until she is of age," the Princess answered, "she is mine to do what I
like with, body and soul. The French law is stricter than the English
in this respect, you know. There may be a little trouble, of course,
but I shall know how to manage her."

"She has likes and dislikes of her own," he remarked, "and fairly
positive ones. I believe if she had her own way, she would spend all
her time with this fisherman here."

The Princess smoothed the lace upon her gown, and gazed reflectively at
the turquoises upon her white fingers.

"Jeanne's father," she remarked, "was bourgeois, and her mother had
little family. Race tells, of course. I have never attempted to
influence her. When there is a great struggle ahead, it is as well to
let her have her own way in small things. Hush! She is coming. I
suppose the croquet has been a failure."

Jeanne came across to them, swinging her mallet in her hand.

"Will some one," she begged, "take our too kind host away from me? He
follows me everywhere, and I am bored. I have played croquet with him,
but he is not satisfied. If I try to read, he comes and sits by my side
and talks nonsense. If I say I am going for a walk, he wants to come
with me. I am tired of it."

The Princess looked at her stepdaughter critically. Jeanne was dressed
in white, with a great red rose stuck through her waistband. She was
paler even than usual, her eyes were dark and luminous, and the curve
of her scarlet lips suggested readily enough the weariness of which she
spoke.

The Princess shrugged her shoulders and gathered up her skirts.

"Do what you like, my dear," she said. "I w