"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if the
Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she suggested.

"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank.

"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a day--" she
began.

"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed.

"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. "Wouldn't
your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize who you were?"

"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker still.

"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," said
she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst us, as we
ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted notions. You
wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?"

"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It might be
rather a lark."

"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her
pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding the
nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the 'whole
blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather alone in an
improbable nest like this--it's some one particular thing. In my time,"
she sighed, "it would have been a woman."