For a moment she stared after him, her eyes fastened on the tall slender beautiful young man. Blair’s fire and ardor, his fresh youthfulness, his protection and his chivalry, his ardent devotion, touched her profoundly. Tears fell, and one splashed on her white glove. Was he really going to ruin his life? The old ballad, _The Earl of Moray_, ran through her head: “And long may his lady look from the castle wall.” Dan had neither title nor, according to Ruggles, had he any money, and she could marry the prince; but Dan, as he walked so fast away, misery snapping at his heels as he went, stamping through the woods, seemed glorious to Letty Lane and the only one she wanted in the world. What if anything should happen to him really? What if he should really start out to do the town according to the fashion of his Anglo-Saxon brothers, but more desperately still? She took a card from the case in the corner of the car, scribbled a few words, told the man to drive around the curve and meet the outlet of the path by which Dan had gone. When she saw him within reaching distance she sent the chauffeur across the woods to give Mr. Blair her scribbled word and consoled herself with the belief that Dan wouldn’t “go to the dogs or throw himself in the river until he had seen her again.” CHAPTER XXVII—AT MAXIM’S At the Meurice, Miss Lane gave strict orders to admit only Mr. Blair to her apartments. She described him. No sooner had she drunk her cup of tea, which Higgins gave her, than she began to expect Dan. He didn’t come. Her dinner, without much appetite, she ate alone in her salon; saw a doctor and made him prescribe something for the cough that racked her chest; looked out to the warm, bright gardens of the Tuileries fading into the pallid loveliness of sunset, indifferent to everything in the world—except Dan Blair. She believed she would soon be indifferent to him, too; then everything would be done with. Now she wondered had he really gone—had he done what he threatened? Why didn’t he come? At twelve o’clock that night, as she lay among the cushions of her sofa, dozing, the door of her parlor was pushed in. She sprang up with a cry of delight; but when Poniotowsky came up to her she exclaimed: “Oh, you!” And the languor and boredom with which she said his name made the prince laugh shortly. “Yes, I. Who did you think it was?” Cynically and rather cruelly he looked down at Letty Lane and admired the picture she made: small, exquisite, her blond head against the dark velvet of the lounge, her gray eyes intensified by the fatigue under them. “Just got in from Carlsbad; came directly here. How-de-do? You look, you know—” he scrutinized her through his single eye-glass—“most frightfully seedy.” “Oh, I’m all right.” She left the sofa, for she wanted to prevent his nearer approach. “Have you had any supper? I’ll call Higgins.”