When will his sisters ask us to dinner?"

Miss Vance looked anxious. "That is a question of great importance,"
she said. "The princesses have invited me through their brother to
call. It is of course etiquette here for the stranger to call first,
but I don't wish to compromise Lucy by making advances."

There was a moment's silence, then Lucy said, blushing and faltering a
little, "It would be better perhaps to call, and not prejudice them, by
any discourtesy, against us. The prince is very kind."

"So! The wind is in that quarter?" Jean said, with a harsh laugh.

She jumped up and went to her own room. She was in a rage at herself.
Why had she not run away to Paris months ago and begun her great
picture of the World's mother, Eve? There was a career for her! And
thinking--perhaps of Eve--she cried hot salt tears.

CHAPTER XI

A week passed, but the question of the first call was not yet settled.
It required as much diplomacy as an international difficulty. Furst
Hugo represented the princesses as "burning with impatience to behold
the engelreine Madchen whom they hoped to embrace as a sister," but no
visible sign of their ardor reached Miss Vance.

On Monday Jean went to spend the day with some of her artist friends,
but at noon she dashed into the room where Clara and Lucy sat sewing,
her dark face blotched red, and her voice stuttering with excitement.

"I have seen into the cave!" she shouted. "I have got at the truth!
It's a rather stagy throne, the Wolfburghs! Plated, cheap!"

"What is the matter with you?" said Miss Vance.

"Nothing is the matter with ME. It is Lucy's tragedy. I've seen the
magnificent ancient palace of the Wolfburghs. It is a flat! In the
very house where I went to-day. The third story flat just under the
attics where the poor Joneses daub portraits. I passed the open doors
and I saw the shabby old tables and chairs and the princesses--two fat
old women in frowzy wrappers, and their hair in papers, eating that
soup of pork and cabbages and raisins--the air was thick with the
smell! And that is not the worst!"

"Take breath, Jean," said Lucy calmly.

"The prince himself--the Joneses told me, there can be no doubt--the
prince makes soap for a living! No wonder you turn pale, Miss Vance.
Soap! He is the silent partner in the firm of Woertz und Zimmer, and
it is not a paying business either."

Jean did not wait for an answer, but walked up and down the room,