Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently t.i.ttered.

"See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, "You're heir to an uncommonly good old t.i.tle," she informed him.

"I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," said he.

"Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out.

"Oh, not so very old," he submitted. "Only seventy, or thereabouts, and younger in many respects than I am. I hope he'll live for ever."

"Hum!" said she, and appeared to fall a-musing. Absently, as it seemed, and slowly, she was pulling off her gloves.

"Feuds in families," she said, in a minute, "are bad things. Why don't you make it up?"

The young man waved his hand, a pantomimic _non-possumus_.

"There's no one left to make it up with--the others are all dead."

"Oh?" she wondered, her eyebrows elevated, whilst automatically her fingers continued to operate upon her gloves. "I thought the last lord left a widow. I seem to have heard of a _Lady_ Blanchemain somewhere."

The young man gave still another of his little laughs.

"Linda Lady Blanchemain?" he said. "Yes, one hears a lot of her. A highly original character, by all accounts. One hears of her everywhere."

Linda Lady Blanchemain's lip began to quiver; but she got it under control.

"Well?" she questioned--eyes fixing his, and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a kind of humorous defiance, as if to say, "Think me an impertinent old meddler if you will, and do your worst,"--"Why don't you make it up with _her_?"

But he didn't seem to mind the meddling in the least. He stood at ease, and plausibly put his case.

"Why don't I? Or why doesn't my uncle? My uncle is a temperamental conservative, a devotee to his traditions--the sort of man who will never do anything that hasn't been the constant habit of his forebears.

He would no more dream of healing a well-established family feud than of selling the family plate. And I--well, surely, it would never be for me to make the advances."

"No, you're right," acknowledged Lady Blanchemain. "The advances should come from her. But people have such a fatal way--even without being temperamental conservatives--of leaving things as they find them.

Besides, never having seen you, she couldn't know how nice you are. All the same, I'll confess, if you insist upon it, that she ought to be ashamed of herself. Come--let's make it up."

She rose, a great soft glowing vision of benignancy, and held out her hand, now gloveless, her pretty little smooth plump right hand, with its twinkling rings.

"Oh!" cried the astonished young man, the astonished, amused, moved, wondering, and entirely won young man, his sea-blue eyes wide open, and a hundred lights of pleasure and surprise dancing in them.

The benignant vision floated towards him, and he took the little white hand in his long lean brown one.

VIII

When the first stress of their emotion had in some degree spent itself Lady Blanchemain, returning to her place on the ottoman, bade John sit down beside her.

"Now," she said, genially imperative, whilst all manner of kindly and admiring interest shone in her face, "there are exactly nine million and ninety-nine questions that you'll be obliged to answer before I've done with you. But to begin, you must clear up at once a mystery that's been troubling me ever since you dashed to my rescue at the gate. What in the name of Reason is the cause of your residence in this ultramundane stronghold?"

John--convict me of d.a.m.nable iteration if you must: Heaven has sent me a laughing hero--John laughed.

"Oh," he said, "there are several causes--there are exactly nine million and ninety-eight."

"Name," commanded Lady Blanchemain, "the first and the last."

"Well," obeyed he, pondering, "I should think the first, the last, and perhaps the chief intermediate, would be--the whole blessed thing." And his arm described a circle which comprehended the castle and all within it, and the countryside without.

"It has a pleasant site, I'll not deny," said Lady Blanchemain. "But don't you find it a trifle far away? And a bit up-hill? I'm staying at the Victoria at Roccadoro, and it took me an hour and a half to drive here."

"But since," said John, with a flattering glance, "since you _are_ here, I have no further reason to deplore its farawayness. So few places are far away, in these times and climes," he added, on a note of melancholy, as one to whom all climes and times were known.

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, matter-of-fact. "Have you been here long?"

"Let me see," John answered. "To-day is the 23rd of April. I arrived here--I offer the fact for what it may be worth--on the Feast of All Fools."

"_Absit omen_," cried she. "And you intend to stay?"

"Oh, I'm at least wise enough not to fetter myself with intentions,"

answered John.

She looked about, calculating, estimating.

"I suppose it costs you the very eyes of your head?" she asked.

John giggled.

"Guess what it costs--I give it to you in a thousand."

She continued her survey, brought it to a period.

"A billion a week," she said, with finality. John exulted.

"It costs me," he told her, "six francs fifty a day--wine included."

"What!" cried she, mistrusting her ears.

"Yes," said he.

"Fudge!" said she, not to be caught with chaff.

"It sounds like a traveller's tale, I know; but that's so often the bother with the truth," said he. "Truth is under no obligation to be _vraisemblable_. I'm here _en pension_."

Lady Blanchemain sniffed.

"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she inquired, her nose in the air.