“You are younger than Frederic,” she said. “Unless we do something to prevent it, your son will be an old man before he is thirty. Don't send him away now, James. Let me have him for a while. I mean it, dear. He is a lonely boy, and I know what it is to be lonely.” “You?” he cried. “Why, you've never known anything but----” “One can be lonely even in the heart of a throng,” she said cryptically. “No, James, I will not have him sent away.” He resented the imputation. “Why do you say that I am sending him away?” “Because you are,” she replied boldly. He was silent for a moment. “We will leave it to Frederic,” he said. Her face brightened. “That is all I ask. He will stay.” There was another pause. “You two have become very good friends, Yvonne.” “He is devoted to me.” “Don't spoil him in making him over,” he said dryly. She blew cigarette--smoke in his face and laughed. There was a knock at the door. “Come in!” she called. Frederic entered. CHAPTER VI A certain element of gaiety invaded the staid old house in these days. The new mistress was full of life and the joy of living. She was accustomed to adulation, she was used to the tumult of society. Her life, since she left the convent school, evidently had been one in which rest, except physical, was unknown. Yvonne Lestrange, in a way, had been born to purple and fine linen. She had never known deprivation of any description. Neither money, position, nor love had been denied her during the few years in which her charm and beauty had flashed across the great European capitals, penetrating even to the recesses of royal courts. It is doubtful if James Brood knew very much concerning her family when he proposed marriage to her, but it is certain that he did not care. He first saw her at the home of a British nobleman, but did not meet her. Something in the vivid, brilliant face of the woman made a deep and lasting impression on him. There was an instant when their eyes met through an opening in the throng which separated them. He was not only conscious of the fact that he was staring at her, but that she was looking at him in a curiously penetrating way. There was a mocking smile on her lips at the time. He saw it fade away, even as the crowd came between. He knew that the smile had not been intended for him, but for someone of the eager cavaliers who surrounded her, and yet there was something singularly direct in the look she gave him. Later on he made inquiries of his host, with whom he had hunted big game in Africa, and learned that she was a guest in the home of the Russian ambassador. He did not see her again until they met in the south of France a few months later. On this occasion they were guests at the same house, and he took her into dinner. He had not forgotten her, and it gratified him immensely to discover that she remembered him.