aching a royal duke manners!

"If the worst comes to the worst, do not be surprised if--but I
cannot write it down. At any rate do not be surprised at anything I
may do--only be ready to help me when I do it. And remain always, as
I shall, faithful to the memory of the White Loch.

"PATSY."

CHAPTER XXV

THE HIGH STILE

Having finished, Stair seemed to wake as from a dream. He had read and
re-read the letter. The words buzzed in his ears, mingled with the sharp
pain at his heart. Patsy a princess--a real prince making love to her, a
man who could be her husband, who might even now have rights upon her,
yet whom it would be impossible to deal with as he had dealt with the
Duke of Lyonesse! He felt desperately lonely up there.

The escarpments of the cliffs sank away beneath him into the chill
turmoil of the winter sea. He had been sitting on a flat tomb, one of
the few cut in stone. The yellow fog had vanished. The moors spread away
vague and simple, the fine wreath-curves of the snow only interrupted
here and there by the brutal rigidity of the tall stone dykes with the
easterly snow-blast still clinging in the chinks and stuffing the
crevices.

Everything was colourless, the ground of a bluish lilac, fading
imperceptibly into a livid sky. Still half-dazed, Stair looked about
him, Patsy's letter in his hand, surprised to find himself out there and
alone. The written characters danced before his eyes, and it was only
the strongest sense of duty which turned his face towards the Bothy and
Julian Wemyss. He was carrying, he knew it well, a letter from the
Princess, enclosing and doubtless supporting a demand for the hand of
Patsy Ferris.

Whitefoot slunk along at his master's side, his tail and ears eloquently
drooped, and his doleful aspect reflecting admirably the mood of his
master. But Stair set his teeth and went forward. He found his breakfast
waiting for him, and Julian Wemyss took the letter with his usual
grateful urbanity. He was not slow in noticing the depressed state of
his companion, though, naturally, he put it down to his having been kept
waiting so long in the raw fog.

"I suppose Jean could not come exactly to the moment?" he said, his
letter still unopened in his hand.

"No," said Stair, "she was waiting for me, but I came back by the cliffs
and the Sailors' Graveyard."

Julian, who knew that Stair never did anything without a reason, asked
him if he had fo