you?"

"I _thought_ I saw you liked trying to flirt when no one was looking.
That sounds rather horrid, but--it's the truth."

"You misjudged me cruelly. Have you no human ambition? I could place you
among the highest in any land. With me, your beauty should shine as it
never could in your own country. Is it nothing to you that I can make
you a Princess?"

"Less than nothing," I answered, "though perhaps it would be pretty of
me to thank you for wanting to make me one. So I do thank you; and I'll
thank you still more if you will go now, and leave me to my thoughts."

"I cannot go till I have made you understand how I love you, how
indispensable you are to me," he persisted. And I grew really angry; for
he had no right to persecute me, when I had refused him.

"Very well, then, _I_ shall go," I said, and would have passed him, but
he seized my hand and held it fast.

It was this moment that Mr. Barrymore chose for paying his respects to
Juliet's tomb; and I blushed as I have never blushed in my life, I
think--blushed till the tears smarted in my eyes. I was afraid he would
believe that I'd been letting Prince Dalmar-Kalm make love to me. But
there was nothing to say, unless I were willing to have a scene, and
that would have been hateful. Nor was there anything to do except the
obvious thing, snatch my hand away; and that might seem to be only
because some one had come. But how I should have loved to box the
Prince's ears! I never dreamed that I had such a temper. I suppose,
though, there must be something of the fishwife in every
woman--something that comes boiling up to the surface once in a while,
and makes _noblesse oblige_ hard to remember.

The one relief to my feelings in this situation was given by my queer
little new pet--the wisp of a black doggie I've named Airole, after the
village where he grew. I'd brought him into the cloister in my arms
hidden under a cape, because he had conceived a suspicious dislike of
the cabman. Now he said all the things to the Prince that I wanted to
say, and more, and would have snapped, if the Prince had not retired his
hand in time.

The process of quieting Airole gave me the chance to make up my mind
what I should do next. If I went away, I couldn't prevent Prince
Dalmar-Kalm from going with me, and Mr. Barrymore would have a right to
imagine that I wished to continue the interrupted scene. If I stayed it
was open for him to fancy that I wanted to be with _him_; but b