tone was no louder than ordinary, but
somehow her voice seemed to be possessed of unusually penetrating
qualities.

"My dear aunt," she said, "you forget I am in mourning for my
stepfather, Monsieur Feurgeres, who was very good to me."

A company of perfectly bred people accepted the remark in sympathetic
silence. There was not even an eyebrow raised, but I fancy that Isobel's
words, calmly spoken and with obvious intent, struck the keynote of her
future relations with her aunt.

Isobel, a few minutes later, brought her cousin over to me.

"Adelaide is very anxious to know you, Arnold!" she said quietly. This
was all the introduction she offered. Immediately afterwards her aunt
called Isobel away to be presented to a new arrival.

"Mr. Greatson," Adelaide said earnestly, "I cannot tell you how
delighted I am that all this trouble is over, and that Isobel is coming
to us. But I think--I think she is paying too great a price. I think my
mother is hatefully, wickedly cruel!"

"My dear young lady," I protested, "I do not think that you must say
that. Your mother's conditions are necessary. In fact, whether she made
them or not, I think that they would be inevitable."

"You are not even to come to Illghera with us? Not to visit us even?"

I shook my head.

"I belong to the great family of Bohemians," I reminded her, "who have
no possessions and but one dress suit. What should I do at Court?"

"What indeed!" she answered, with a little sigh, "for you are a citizen
of the greater world!"

"There is no such thing," I answered. "We carry our own world with us.
We make it small or large with our own hands."

"For some," she murmured, "the task then is very difficult. Where one
lives in a forcing-house of conventions, and the doors are fast locked,
it is very easy to be stifled, but it is hard indeed to breathe."

"Princess," I said gravely, "have you examined the windows?"

"I do not understand you," she answered.

"But it is simple, surely," I declared. "Even if you must remain in the
forcing-house, it is for you to open the windows and breathe what air
you will. For your thoughts at least are free, and it is of our thoughts
that our lives are fashioned."

She sighed.

"Ah, Mr. Greatson," she said, "one does not talk like that at Court."

"You have a great opportunity," I answered. "Character is a flower which
blossoms in all manner of places. Sometimes it comes nearest to
perfection in the most unlikely sp