interrupted by the salutations of passing acquaintances. Jeanne
alone looked about her with any interest. To the others, this sort
of thing--the music of the red-coated band, the flowers, and the
passing throngs of people, the handsomest and the weariest crowd in
the world--were only part of the treadmill of life.

"By the by, Mr. De la Borne," the Princess asked, "how much longer
are you going to stay in London?"

"I must go back to-morrow or the next day," the young man answered,
a little gloomily. "I sha'n't mind it half so much if you people
only make up your minds to pay me that visit."

The Princess motioned to him to draw his chair a little nearer to
hers.

"If we take this tour at all," she remarked, "I should like to start
the day after to-morrow. There is a perfectly hideous function on
Thursday which I should so like to miss, and the stupidest dinner-
party on earth at night. Should you be home by then, do you think?"

"If there were any chance of your coming at all," the young man
answered eagerly, "I should leave by the first train to-morrow
morning."

"I think," the Princess declared softly, "that we will come. Don't
think me rude if I say that we could not possibly be more bored than
we are in London. I do not want to take Jeanne to any of the country
house-parties we have been invited to. You know why. She really is
such a child, and I am afraid that if she gets any wrong ideas about