short. She was wondering now why Jane wore no jewelry. "Not an
earring! Not a hoop on her finger! If I had her money!" glancing down at
the blaze of rubies on her breast.

They met under a clump of lilacs.

"Stop one moment," said Jane, looking down at her not unkindly. "You must
not let this go too far, you know."

"What do you mean?" The princess fixed her eye upon her, with a somewhat
snaky light in it. Indeed, when she assumed that attitude toward Van Ness
or any other man she could frighten and hold him at bay as if she had been
a cobra about to strike. But the lithe dark body, the vivid color, the
beady eye only reminded Jane oddly of a darting little lizard, and tempted
her to laugh.

"No. You really must keep within bounds. Because I have my eye upon you. I
can't let you cheat that good soul, who brought you here, to her damage."

The princess gasped and whitened as though a cold calm hand was laid on her
miserable sham of a body.

"Do you know who I am?" stiffening herself into her idea of regal bearing.

"Not exactly. It does not matter in the least, either. I took your means of
earning a living from you once, you told me, and I don't wish to do it
again. I will not interfere as long as you hurt nobody."

The princess stared at her and burst into an hysteric laugh: "I believe, in
my soul, you mean just what you say! You are the shrewdest or stupidest
woman I ever saw! Do you sympathize with me? Do you feel for me?"
tragically, "or are you trying to worm my secret from me?"

"Neither one nor the other," coolly. "I know your secret. You are no spirit
and no princess. I shall pity you perhaps when you go to some honest work.
Why," with sudden interest, "I can find steady work for you at once. A
staymaker in the village told me the other day--"

"_I_ make stays!"

They both laughed. Jane's chief thought probably was how bony and sickly
this poor woman was: her own solid white limbs seemed selfish to her for
the instant. She took the twitching, ringed fingers in her hand.

"Play out your own play," she said good-humoredly. "You will not hurt
anybody very seriously, I fancy."

They walked in silence to the house.

The princess bent forward in the carriage-window as they drove away to look
back at her. "I wish my son knew such women as that!" she cried.

"Son?" said the startled Mrs. Wilde. "You have not spoken before to me of
your son, madame."

"I have always kept him under tutors--at Leipsic."