f man or the bases of civil
society, if you can't snub a creature whom you regularly tip? For five
francs a week the creature in shoulder-knots cleans my boots
(indifferent well), brushes my clothes, runs my errands (indifferent
slow),--and swallows my snubs as if they were polenta."

"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your threshold--and gets an
extra plateful for his pains," laughed the lady. "Where," she asked,
"does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster keep himself?"

"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The parroco,
who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically never comes
to Sant' Alessina."

"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were his
tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of the head
complimented him upon it.

"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish.

She regarded him doubtfully.

"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if the
Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she suggested.

"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank.

"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a day--" she
began.

"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed.

"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. "Wouldn't
your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize who you were?"

"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker still.

"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," said
she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst us, as we
ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted notions. You
wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?"

"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It might be
rather a lark."

"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her
pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding the
nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the 'whole
blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather alone in an
improbable nest like this--it's some one particular thing. In my time,"
she sighed, "it would have been a woman."

"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow.

"You're very good--but you confuse the issue," said she. "In my time the
world was young and romantic. In this age of prose and prudence--_is_ it
a woman?"

"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John,
sententious. "I can't admit tha