you are ready now to obey
your stepmother, and to make me very, very happy."

Jeanne looked at him deliberately.

"It depends," she said, "upon circumstances."

"Tell me what they are quickly," the Count declared. "I am impatient. I
cannot bear that you keep me waiting. Let me know of my happiness."

The Princess was suddenly uneasy. There was one weak point in her
schemes, a weakness of her own creating. Ever since she had told Jeanne
the truth about her lack of fortune, she had felt that it was a
mistake. Suppose she should be idiot enough to give the thing away! The
Princess felt her heart beat fast at the mere supposition. There was
something about Jeanne's delicate oval face, her straight mouth and
level eyebrows, which somehow suggested that gift which to the Princess
was so incomprehensible in her sex, the gift of honesty. Suppose Jeanne
were to tell the Count the truth!

"First of all, then," Jeanne said, "I must ask you whether my
stepmother has told the truth about myself and my fortune."

The Princess knew then that the game was up. She sank back upon the
sofa, and at that moment she would have declared that there was nothing
in the world more terrible than an ungrateful and inconsiderate child.

"The truth?" the Count remarked, a little puzzled. "I know only what
the world knows, that you are the daughter of Carl le Mesurier, and
that he left you the residue of one of the greatest fortunes in Europe."

Jeanne drew a letter from her pocket.

"The Princess," she remarked, "must have forgotten to tell you. This
great fortune that all the world has spoken of, and that seems to have
made me so famous, has been all the time something of a myth. It has
existed only in the imaginations of my kind friends. A few days ago my
stepmother here told me of this. I wrote at once to Monsieur Laplanche,
my trustee. She would not let me send the letter. When I was at
Salthouse, however, I wrote again, and this time I had a reply. It is
here. There is a statement," she continued, "which covers many pages,
and which shows exactly how my father's fortune was exaggerated, how
securities have dwindled, and how my stepmother's insisting upon a very
large allowance during my school-days, has eaten up so much of the
residue. There is left to me, it appears, a sum of fourteen thousand
pounds. That is a very small fortune, is it not?" she asked calmly.

The Count was gazing at her as one might gaze upon a tragedy.

"It is no