laughing angrily to herself. "Yes, soap! He cannot sneer at Lucy's
ancestral saddles, now. Nor my father's saws! His rank is the only
thing he has to give for Lucy's millions, and now she knows what it is
worth!"

Lucy rose and, picking up her work basket, walked quietly out of the
room. Jean flashed an indignant glance after her.

"She might have told me that he gave himself! Surely the man counts
for something! Anyhow, rank like his is not smirched by poverty or
trade. Bismarck himself brews beer."

"Your temper is contradictory to-day," said Clara coldly. "Did you
know," she said presently, "that the princesses will be at the Countess
von Amte's to-morrow?"

"Then we shall meet them!" cried Jean. "Then something will be
settled."

Lucy locked the door of her chamber after her. She found much comfort
in the tiny bare room with its white walls and blue stove, and the
table where lay her worn Bible and a picture of her old home. The room
seemed a warm home to her now. Above the wall she had hung photographs
of the great Madonnas, and lately she had placed one of Frances
Waldeaux among them. That was the face on which she looked last at
night. When Clara had noticed it, Lucy had said, "I am as fond of the
dear lady as if she were my own mother."

She sat down before it now, and taking out her sewing began to work,
glancing up at it, half smiling as to a friend who talked to her. She
thought of Furst Hugo boiling soap, with a gentle pity, and of Jean
with hot disdain. What had Jean to do with it? The prince was her own
lover, as her gloves were her own.

But indeed, the prince and love were but shadows on the far sky line to
the little girl; the real things were her work and her Bible, and
George's mother talking to her. She often traced remembered
expressions on Mrs. Waldeaux's face; the gayety, the sympathy, a
strange foreboding in the eyes. Finer meanings, surely, than any in
the features of these immortal insipid Madonnas!

Sometimes Lucy could not decide whether she had seen these meanings on
Frances Waldeaux's face, or on her son's.

She sewed until late in the afternoon. There came a tap at the door.
She opened it, and there stood Mrs. Waldeaux, wrapped in a heavy cloak.
Lucy jumped at her, trembling, and hugged her.

"Oh, come in! Come in!" she cried shrilly. "I have just been thinking
of you and talking to you!"

Frances laughed, bewildered. "Oh, it is Miss Dunbar? The man