cess said, throwing
herself into a wicker chair by the side of Jeanne's table. "I am afraid
that all that I said must have sounded very cruel and abrupt. You see I
have had this thing on my mind for so long. It has been a trouble to
me, Jeanne."

Jeanne raised her large eyes and looked steadily at her stepmother. She
felt almost ashamed of her coldness and lack of sympathy. The Princess
was certainly looking worn and worried.

"I am sorry," Jeanne said stiffly. "I cannot imagine how you could have
supported life for a day under such conditions."

Her stepmother sighed.

"That," she said, "is because you have had so little experience of
life, and you do not understand its practical necessities. Children
like you seem to think that the commonplace necessaries of life drop
into our laps as a matter of course, or that they are a sort of gift
from Heaven to the deserving. As a matter of fact," the Princess
continued, "nothing of the sort happens. Life is often a very cruel and
a very difficult thing. We are given tastes, and no means to gratify
them. How could I, for instance, face life as a lodging-house keeper,
or at best as a sort of companion to some ill-tempered old harridan,
who would probably only employ me to have some one to bully? You
yourself, Jeanne, are fond of luxuries."

It was a new reflection to Jeanne. She became suddenly thoughtful.

"I have noticed your tastes," the Princess continued. "You would be
miserable in anything but silk stockings, wouldn't you? And your ideas
of lingerie are quite in accord with the ideas of the modern young
woman of wealth. You fill your rooms with flowers. You buy expensive
books," she added, taking up for a moment a volume of De Ronsard, bound
in green vellum, with uncut edges. "Your tastes in eating and drinking,
too," she continued, "are a little on the sybaritic side. Have you
realized what it will mean to give all these things up--to wear coarse
clothes, to eat coarse food, to get your books from a cheap library,
and look at other people's flowers?"

Jeanne frowned. The idea was certainly not pleasing.

"It will be bad for you," the Princess continued, "and it will be very
much worse for me, because I have been used to these things all my
life. You may think me very brutal at having tried to help you toward
the only means of escape for either of us, but I think, dear, you
scarcely realize the alternative. It is not only what you condemn
yourself to. Remember tha