She tried hard to see his face, but he kept it steadfastly turned away.  She sighed.  Only a few yards behind the maid was walking.

“Mr. Andrew,” she said, “it was you whom I meant.  Won’t you say something nice to me for my own sake?”

They were nearing the Hall now, and it seemed natural enough that he should hold her hand for a minute in his.

“I will tell you,” he said quietly, “that your coming has been a pleasure, and your going will be a pain, and I will tell you that you have left an empty place that no one else can fill.  You have made what our people here call the witch music upon the marshes for me, so that I shall never walk here again as long as I live without hearing it and thinking of you.”

“Is that all?” she whispered.

He pretended not to hear her.

“I am nearly double your age,” he said, “and I have lived an idle, perhaps a worthless, life.  I have done no harm.  My talents, if I have any, have certainly been buried.  If I had met you out in the world, your world, well, I might have taught myself to forget—­”

He broke off abruptly in his sentence.  Cecil stood before them, suddenly emerged from the hand-gate leading into the Hall gardens.  “At last!” he exclaimed, taking Jeanne by the hands.  “The Princess is distracted.  We have all been distracted.  How could you make us so unhappy?”

She drew her hands away coldly.

“I fancy that my stepmother,” she said, “will have survived my absence.  I was caught in a storm.  I expect that your brother has already told you about it.”

He looked from one to the other.

“So you have told her, Andrew,” he said simply.

Andrew nodded.  The three walked up toward the house in somewhat constrained silence.  She was trying her hardest to make Andrew look at her, and he was trying his hardest to resist.  The Princess came out to them.  The morning was warm, and she was wearing a white wrapper.  Her toilette was not wholly completed, but she was sufficiently picturesque.

“My dear Jeanne,” she cried, “you have nearly sent us mad with anxiety.  How could you wander off like that!”

Jeanne stood a little apart.  She avoided the Princess’ hands.  She stood upon the soft turf with her hands clasped, her cheeks very pale, her eyes bright with some inward excitement.

“Do you wish me to answer that question?” she said.

The Princess stared.

“What do you mean, my child?” she exclaimed.

“You ask me,” Jeanne said, “why I went wandering off into the marshes.  I will tell you.  It is because I am unhappy.  It is because I do not like the life into which you have brought me, nor the people with whom we live.  I do not like late hours, supper parties and dinner parties, dances where half the people are bourgeois, and where all the men make stupid love to me.  I do not like the shops, the vulgar shop people, fashionable clothes, and fashionable promenading.  I am tired of it already.  If I am rich, why may I not buy the right to live as I choose?”