My Friend Prospero | Page 6

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 damnable 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.
"Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina does. I

board at the presbytery."
"Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her
eyebrows went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?"
"For six francs fifty a day--wine included," chuckled John.
"Wine, and apparently the unhindered enjoyment of--the whole blessed
thing," supplemented she, with a reminder of his comprehensive
gesture.
"Yes--the run of the house and garden, the freedom of the hills and
valley."
"I understand," she said, and was mute for a space, readjusting her
impressions. "I had supposed," she went on at last, "from the handsome
way in which you snubbed that creature in shoulder-knots, and
proceeded to do the honours of the place, that you were little less than
its proprietor."
"Well,