"Oh! do YOU think so, my dear? Really! Well, I always have liked the young man. So simple. So secure of his social position. The Wolfburghs, I find, go back to the eleventh century. Mr. Perry had noble traits, but one never felt quite safe as to his nails or his grammar."
"But the prince—the prince?" cried Jean.
"Oh, yes. Well, he writes—most deferentially. He begs for the honor of an interview with me this afternoon upon a subject of the most vital importance. He says, 'regarding you, as I do, in loco parentis to the hochgeboren Fraulein Dunbar.'" "Hochgeboren!" said Lucy. "My grandfather was a saddler. Tell him so, Miss Vance. Tell him the exact facts. I want no disclosures after——"
"After marriage?" said Jean, rising suddenly. "Then you have decided?"
"I have not said that I had decided," replied Lucy calmly.
Jean laughed. "He will not be scared by the saddler. Europeans of his order take no account of our American class distinctions. They look upon us as low-born parvenues, all alike. They weigh and value us by other standards than birth."
"I have money, if you mean that, Jean," said Lucy cheerfully.
"I think you had better go away, girls, if you have finished your dejeuner. He may be here at any moment now," said Clara, looking anxiously at her watch.
Lucy went to her little chamber and sat down to work at a monstrous caricature which she was painting of the church. Jean paced up and down the stone corridor, looking out of the window into the Platz.
"He has come," she said excitedly, appearing at Lucy's door. "He went into the church first, to say an ave for help, poor little man! His fat face is quite pale and stern. It is a matter of life and death to him. And it's no more to you than the choosing of a new coat."