“What matters indeed! You have enough privileges already, without expecting to remain always young.” “Privileges! You surprise me!” “Certainly,” she insisted. “Aren’t you a great Prince, a Serene-Highness--just as in the fairy-tales? Haven’t you huge, big estates in Russia and the Crimea, villas in the south of France, _fortins_ in the Caucasus, mines in Siberia, besides loads and loads of money, jewels, picture-galleries, a private band of musicians, acres of hothouses, horses, stud-farms? A regular Marquis de Carabas, that’s what you are!” She paused for lack of breath, and once more he laughed. “You overwhelm me, _ma cousine_,” he mocked; “but since I am old, quite an old gentleman, you see ... what are these manifold gifts to me?” “Old! Oh, not so very old, after all!” she suddenly contradicted. “Fortunately you are handsome, and very, very tall. Whew ... ew! You are tall! I love that! I despise small men. They’re always barking and fussing, like black-and-tans. Don’t you think so?” “Your knowledge is indeed extensive, ‘Gamin,’” he praised. “Yet it is scarcely necessary to be a giant in order to possess a kindly temper. I have met--” “Never mind what you have met,” she interrupted. “I know that you are good-tempered, and six foot four inches. That’s enough proof of what I said just now.” “Thank you!” he began, dryly. But in one clean bound she cleared the space between the window and a ponderous oaken bench, upon which she perched herself, her feet ten inches from the immense rug covering all the middle of the room. “And now,” she stated, “I must be reasonable, and grown-up, and all the rest of it, so that the person who first exhorted me to listen to reason may not find me lacking in that desirable quality.” “Is there really a person bold enough to preach reason to _you_?” he commenced; but she silenced him by an eminently peremptory gesture. “Listen!” she admonished. “Do you hear wheels?” “Wheels?” he questioned, sincerely astonished. “In this storm?” “And why not? Why shouldn’t people travel in a storm when they are not imprisoned, as I am?” “You are a prisoner?” Prince Basil asked, with amazement. “Of course I am. Papa--the dear Saints of Brittany bless him--has decreed--decreed, you understand--‘_J’ai décrété_’ was what he said--he loves such sentences--that he would go alone to fetch _my_ Loris at the station. You will agree with him, I am sure, ‘little girls’ should always be left at home. Eh?” “What is ‘your Loris,’ if I may be so indiscreet as to ask, _petite cousine_?”