Hoofs pounded behind, and Mr. Boone drew up alongside. "She came back, and made me get away from the coach," he announced. "Prob'bly she wanted to cry some; she looked it." Yet another of her contradictions! "Then why in the nation," Driscoll demanded, "do you keep hanging round that coach for? Look here Shanks, you make me plum' weary. The idea of you falling in----" "No more'n you, you innocent gamboling lamb of an ol' blatherskite." But Daniel's steel blue eyes had softened to their gentlest. "Say Jack," he added, "she's going back to Paris." "Don't I know it? Lord A'mighty!" "Go on, never mind me," said Mr. Boone. "Groan out loud, if you want to. For she sho'ly is, yes, back to Paris. Now Buh'the"--The Troubadour's _r's_ always liquefied dreamily with that name--"Buh'the has been telling me a few things, and I'm sure reporter enough to scout out the rest of the story, and it's just this--Jack, she's fair broken-hearted." "Miss Burt?" "No, no, the marchioness. She staked out a campaign over here, and it's panned out all wrong, and it wasn't her fault either. Poor girl, no wonder she might like to cry a little. She's lavished everything she had on it too, ancestral chateau, and all that." "But," said Driscoll quickly "she'll not suffer. There's her title----" "Title?" exclaimed Daniel. "W'y, she's going to give that up too, not having any chateau any more, and she'll trip blithely down among the people again, where she says it's more comfortable anyhow. Title? Well, you've suhtinly noticed that she always did take that humorously. Her grandfather--Buh'the says--was right considerable of a jurist, used scissors and paste, and helped make a scrap-book called the Napoleonic code, and Nap the First changed him into a picayunish duke. But wasn't the nobility of intellect there already? Sho'ly! Miss Jacqueline, though, likes the father of her grandfather the best. He never was noble, technically I mean. His was the nobility of heart, and he'd have scorned to be tagged. He just baked bread, and fed most half of Saint Antoine for nothing at times, while the Dauphin at Versailles was throwing cakes to the swans. Howsoever," Mr. Boone added hastily, as sop to his softness for princes, "I reckon that there Dauphin was noble too. Both of 'em fed the hungry mouths that were nearest." "But," demanded Driscoll, "doesn't her title carry some sort of a--a compensation?" "Not a red sou. The majorat--that's the male line--died out with her father, which means that the annuity died out too." "W'y, Great Scot, she's----" "She's tired and disheartened, that's what she is, and she's going back to Paris, and you--" Boone paused, and glared at his companion, "--and you mean to let her!" Old Demijohn felt a spur kicked against his flank, and he lifted his fore feet and sped as the wind. It was fully an hour later when Meagre Shanks caught up with horse and rider again. Rather, he met them coming back. His conversation was guileless, at first.