Jeanne of the Marshes | Page 5

whole lot put together if only I could
get him away from them--make up a little party somewhere, and have
him to myself for a week or two."
The Princess was thoughtful.
"To go abroad at this time of the year," she remarked, "is almost
impossible. Besides, you have only just come back."
"Absolutely impossible," he answered. "Besides, I shouldn't care to do
it just now. It looks like running away. A week or so ago you were
talking of taking a villa down the river. I wondered whether you had
thought any more of it."
The Princess shook her head.
"I dare not," she answered. "I have gone already further than I meant to.
This house and the servants and carriages are costing me a small

fortune. I dare not even look at my bills. Another house is not to be
thought of."
Major Forrest looked gloomily at the shining tip of his patent boot.
"It's jolly hard luck," he muttered. "A quiet place somewhere in the
country, with Engleton and you and myself, and another one or two,
and I should be able to pull through. As it is, I feel inclined to chuck it
all."
The Princess looked at him curiously. He was certainly more than
ordinarily pale, and the hand which rested upon the side of his chair
was twitching a little nervously.
"My dear Nigel," she said, "do go to the chiffonier there and help
yourself to a drink. I hate to see you white to the lips, and trembling as
though death itself were at your elbow. Borrow a little false courage, if
you lack the real thing."
The man obeyed her suggestion with scarcely a protest.
"I had hoped, Ena," he remarked a little peevishly, "to have found you
more sympathetic."
"You are so sorry for yourself," she answered, "that you seem scarcely
to need my sympathy. However, sit down and talk to me reasonably."
"I talk reasonably enough," he answered, "but I really am hard up
against it. Don't think I have come begging. I know you've done all you
can, and it's a matter with me now of more than a few hundreds. My
only hope is Engleton. Can't you suggest anything?"
The Princess rested her head slightly upon the long slender fingers of
her right hand. Bond Street had taken care of her complexion, but the
veins in her hand were blue, and art had no means of concealing a
certain sharpness of features and the thin lines about the eyes, nameless
suggestions of middle age. Yet she was still a handsome woman. She
knew how to dress, and how to make the best of herself. She had the

foreigner's instinct for clothes, and her figure was still irreproachable.
She sat and looked with a sort of calculating interest at the man who for
years had come as near touching her heart as any of his sex. Curiously
enough she knew that this new aspect in which he now presented
himself, this incipient cowardice-- the first-fruits of weakening
nerves--did not and could not affect her feelings for him. She saw him
now almost for the first time with the mask dropped, no longer cold,
cynical and calculating, but a man moved to his shallow depths by what
might well seem to him, a dweller in the narrow ways of life, as a
tragedy. It looked at her out of his grey eyes. It showed itself in the
twitching of his lips. For many years he had lived upon a little less than
nothing a year. Now for the first time his means of livelihood were
threatened. His long-suffering acquaintances had left him alone at the
card-table.
"You disappoint me, Nigel," she said. "I hate to see a man weaken.
There is nothing against you. Don't act as though there could be. As to
this little house-party you were speaking of, I only wish I could think of
something to help you. By the by, what are you doing to- night?"
"Nothing," he answered, "except that Engleton is expecting me to dine
with him."
"I have an idea," the Princess said slowly. "It may not come to anything,
but it is worth trying. Have you met my new admirer, Mr. Cecil de la
Borne?"
Forrest shook his head.
"Do you mean a dandified-looking boy whom you were driving with in
the Park yesterday?"
The Princess nodded.
"We met him a week or so ago," she answered, "and he has been very
attentive. He has a country place down in Norfolk, which from his
description is, I should think, like a castle in Hermitland. Jeanne and I
are dining with him to-night at the Savoy. You and Engleton must

come, too. I can arrange it. It is just possible that we may be able to