ose very slowly to her feet.

"The chariot of deliverance!" she murmured.

"It is the Prince of Seyre," John remarked, gazing down with a slight
frown upon his forehead.

She nodded. They had started the descent, and she was walking in very
leisurely fashion.

"The prince is a great friend of mine," she said. "I had promised to
spend last night, or, at any rate, some portion of the evening, at
Raynham Castle on my way to London."

He summoned up courage to ask her the question which had been on his
lips more than once.

"As your stay with us is so nearly over, won't you abandon your
incognito?"

"In the absence of your brother," she answered, "I will risk it. My name
is Louise Maurel."

"Louise Maurel, the actress?" he repeated wonderingly.

"I am she," Louise confessed. "Would your brother," she added, with a
little grimace, "feel that he had given me a night's lodging under false
pretense?"

John made no immediate reply. The world had turned topsyturvy with him.
Louise Maurel, and a great friend of the Prince of Seyre! He walked on
mechanically until she turned and looked at him.

"Well?"

"I am sorry," he declared bluntly.

"Why?" she asked, a little startled at his candor.

"I am sorry, first of all, that you are a friend of the Prince of
Seyre."

"And again why?"

"Because of his reputation in these parts."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"I am not a scandalmonger," John replied dryly. "I speak only of what I
know. His estates near here are systematically neglected. He is the
worst landlord in the country, and the most unscrupulous. His tenants,
both here and in Westmoreland, have to work themselves to death to
provide him with the means of living a disreputable life."

"Are you not forgetting that the Prince of Seyre is a friend of mine?"
she asked stiffly.

"I forget nothing," he answered. "You see, up here we have not learned
the art of evading the truth."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"So much for the Prince of Seyre, then. And now, why your dislike of my
profession?"

"That is another matter," he confessed. "You come from a world of which
I know nothing. All I can say is that I would rather think of you--as
something different."

She laughed at his somber face and patted his arm lightly.

"Big man of the hills," she said, "when you come down from your frozen
heights to look for the flowers, I shall try to make you see things
differently!"