w her hands away coldly.

"I fancy that my stepmother," she said, "will have survived my absence.
I was caught in a storm. I expect that your brother has already told
you about it."

He looked from one to the other.

"So you have told her, Andrew," he said simply.

Andrew nodded. The three walked up toward the house in somewhat
constrained silence. She was trying her hardest to make Andrew look at
her, and he was trying his hardest to resist. The Princess came out to
them. The morning was warm, and she was wearing a white wrapper. Her
toilette was not wholly completed, but she was sufficiently picturesque.

"My dear Jeanne," she cried, "you have nearly sent us mad with anxiety.
How could you wander off like that!"

Jeanne stood a little apart. She avoided the Princess' hands. She stood
upon the soft turf with her hands clasped, her cheeks very pale, her
eyes bright with some inward excitement.

"Do you wish me to answer that question?" she said.

The Princess stared.

"What do you mean, my child?" she exclaimed.

"You ask me," Jeanne said, "why I went wandering off into the marshes.
I will tell you. It is because I am unhappy. It is because I do not
like the life into which you have brought me, nor the people with whom
we live. I do not like late hours, supper parties and dinner parties,
dances where half the people are bourgeois, and where all the men make
stupid love to me. I do not like the shops, the vulgar shop people,
fashionable clothes, and fashionable promenading. I am tired of it
already. If I am rich, why may I not buy the right to live as I choose?"

The Princess rarely allowed herself to show surprise. At this moment,
however, she was completely overcome.

"What is it you want, then, child?" she demanded.

"I should like," Jeanne answered, "to buy Mr. De la Borne's house upon
the island, and live there, with just a couple of maids, and my books.
I should like some friends, of course, but I should like to find them
for myself, amongst the country people, people whom I could trust and
believe in, not people whose clothes and manners and speech are all
hammered out into a type, and whose real self is so deeply buried that
you cannot tell whether they are honest or rogues. That is what I
should like, stepmother, and if you wish to earn my gratitude, that is
how you will let me live."

The Princess stared at the child as though she were a lunatic.

"Jeanne," she exclaimed weakly, "what has beco