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                          _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

                         DEAR ENEMY
                         DADDY LONG LEGS
                         JUST PATTY
                         PATTY AND PRISCILLA
                         THE FOUR POOLS MYSTERY
                         JERRY
                         MUCH ADO ABOUT PETER

                                 LONDON
                          HODDER AND STOUGHTON

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                  THE
                             WHEAT PRINCESS

                                   By
                              JEAN WEBSTER
        Author of 'Daddy Long Legs,' 'Just Patty,' 'Dear Enemy'


                          HODDER AND STOUGHTON
                         LIMITED        LONDON

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                O. HENRY

        "The time is coming, let us hope, when the whole
        English-speaking world will recognise in O. HENRY one
        of the greatest masters of modern fiction."

                                                        STEPHEN LEACOCK.

                   HODDER & STOUGHTON publish all the
                   books by O. HENRY in their famous
                             Popular Series

                         THE FOUR MILLION
                         THE TRIMMED LAMP
                         SIXES AND SEVENS
                         STRICTLY BUSINESS
                         ROADS OF DESTINY
                         CABBAGES AND KINGS
                         HEART OF THE WEST
                         THE GENTLE GRAFTER
                         OPTIONS
                         WHIRLIGIGS
                         THE VOICE OF THE CITY
                         ROLLING STONES

                                 Cloth
                      LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON

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                                PROLOGUE


IF you leave the city by the Porta Maggiore and take the Via
Praenestina, which leads east into the Sabine hills, at some thirty-six
kilometers' distance from Rome you will pass on your left a grey-walled
village climbing up the hillside. This is Palestrina, the old Roman
Praeneste; and a short distance beyond--also on the left--you will find
branching off from the straight Roman highway a steep mountain road,
which, if you stick to it long enough, will take you, after many
windings, to Castel Madama and Tivoli.

Several kilometers along this road you will see shooting up from a bare
crag above you a little stone hamlet crowned by the ruins of a
mediaeval fortress. The town--Castel Vivalanti--was built in the days
when a stronghold was more to be thought of than a water-supply, and
its people, from habit or love, or perhaps sheer necessity, have lived
on there ever since, going down in the morning to their work in the
plain and toiling up at night to their homes on the hill. So steep is
its site that the doorway of one house looks down on the roof of the
house below, and its narrow stone streets are in reality flights of
stairs. The only approach is from the front, by a road which winds and
unwinds like a serpent and leads at last to the Porta della Luna,
through which all of the traffic enters the town. The gate is
ornamented with the crest of the Vivalanti--a phoenix rising out of the
flame, supported by a heavy machicolated top, from which, in the old
days, stones and burning oil might be dropped upon the heads of the
unwelcome guests.

The town is a picturesque little affair--it would be hard to find a
place more so in the Sabine villages, it is very, very poor. In the
march of the centuries it has fallen out of step and been left far
behind; to look at it, one would scarcely dream that on the clear days
the walls and towers of modern Rome are in sight on the horizon. But in
its time Castel Vivalanti was not insignificant. This little hamlet has
entertained history within its walls. It has bodily outfaced robber
barons and papal troops. It has been besieged and conquered, and, alas,
betrayed--and that by its own prince. Twice has it been razed to the
ground and twice rebuilt. In one way or another, though, it has
weathered the centuries, and it stands to-day grey and forlorn,
clustering about the walls of its donjon and keep.

Castel Vivalanti, as in the middle ages, still gives the title to a
Roman prince. The house of Vivalanti was powerful in its day, and the
princes may often be met with--not always to their credit--in the
history of the Papal States. They were oftener at war than at peace
with the holy see, and there is the story of one pope who spent four
weary months watching the view from a very small window in Vivalanti's
donjon. But, in spite of their unholy quarrels, they were at times
devout enough, and twice a cardinal's hat has been worn in the family.
The house of late years has dwindled somewhat, both in fortune and
importance; but, nevertheless, Vivalanti is a name which is still
spoken with respect among the old nobles of Rome.

The lower <DW72>s of the hill on which the village stands are well
wooded and green with stone-pines and cypresses, olive orchards and
vineyards. Here the princes built their villas when the wars with the
popes were safely at an end and they could risk coming down from their
stronghold on the mountain. The old villa was built about a mile below
the town, and the gardens were laid out in terraces and parterres along
the <DW72> of the hill. It has long been in ruin, but its foundations
still stand, and the plan of the gardens may easily be traced. You will
see the entrance at the left of the road--a massive stone gateway
topped with moss-covered urns and a double row of cone-shaped cypresses
bordering a once stately avenue now grown over with weeds. If you pause
for a moment--and you cannot help doing so--you will see, between the
portals at the end of the avenue, some crumbling arches, and even, if
your eyes are good, the fountain itself.

Any contadino that you meet on the road will tell you the story of the
old Villa Vivalanti and the 'Bad Prince' who was (by the grace of God)
murdered two centuries ago. He will tell you--a story not uncommon in
Italy--of storehouses bursting with grain while the peasants were
starving, and of how, one moonlight night, as the prince was strolling
on the terrace contentedly pondering his wickednesses of the day, a
peasant from his own village up on the mountain, creeping behind him,
quiet as a cat, stabbed him in the back and dropped his body in the
fountain. He will tell you how the light from the burning villa was
seen as far as Rocca di Papa in the Alban hills; and he will add, with
a laugh and a shrug, that some people say when the moon is full the old
prince comes back and sits on the edge of the fountain and thinks of
his sins, but that, for himself, he thinks it an old woman's tale.
Whereupon he will cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the dark
shadow of the cypresses and covertly cross himself as he wishes you,
'_A revederla_.'

You cannot wonder that the young prince (two centuries ago) did not
build his new villa on the site of the old; for even had he, like the
brave contadino, cared nothing for ghosts, still it was scarcely a
hallowed spot, and lovers would not care to stroll by the fountain. So
it happens that you must travel some distance further along the same
road before you reach the gates of the new villa, built anno domini
1693, in the pontificate of his Holiness Innocent XII. Here you will
find no gloomy cypresses: the approach is bordered by spreading
plane-trees. The villa itself is a rambling affair, and, though
slightly time-worn, is still decidedly imposing, with its various
wings, its balconies and loggia and marble terrace.

The new villa--for such one must call it--faces west and north. On the
west it looks down over olive orchards and vineyards to the Roman
Campagna, with the dome of St. Peter's a white speck in the distance,
and, beyond it, to a narrow, shining ribbon of sea. On the north it
looks up to the Sabine mountains, with the height of Soracte rising
like an island on the horizon. For the rest, it is surrounded by laurel
and ilex groves with long shady walks and leafy arbors, with fountains
and cascades and broken statues all laid out in the stately formality
of the seventeenth century. But the trees are no longer so carefully
trimmed as they were a century ago; the sun rarely shines in these
green alleys, and the nightingales sing all day. Through every season,
but especially in the springtime, the garden-borders are glowing with
colour. Hedges of roses, oleanders and golden laburnum, scarlet
pomegranate blossoms and red and white camellias, marguerites and
lilies and purple irises, bloom together in flaming profusion. And
twice a year, in the spring and the autumn, the soft yellow walls of
the villa are covered with lavender wistaria and pink climbing roses,
and every breeze is filled with their fragrance.

It is a spot in which to dream of old Italy, of cardinals and pages and
gorgeous lackeys, of gallant courtiers and beautiful ladies, of Romeos
and Juliets trailing back and forth over the marble terrace and making
love under the Italian moon. But if there have been lovers, as is
doubtless the case, there have also been haters among the Vivalanti,
and you may read of more than one prince murdered by hands other than
those of his peasants. The walls of the new villa, in the course of
their two hundred years, have looked down on their full share of
tragedies, and the Vivalanti annals are grim reading withal.

And now, having pursued the Vivalanti so far, you may possibly be
disappointed to hear that the story has nothing to do with them. But if
you are interested in learning more of the family you can find his
Excellency Anastasio di Vivalanti, the present prince and the last of
the line, any afternoon during the season in the casino at Monte Carlo.
He is a slight young man with a dark, sallow face and many fine lines
under his eyes.

Then why, you may ask, if we are not concerned with the Vivalanti, have
we lingered so long in their garden? Ah--but the garden does concern
us, though the young prince may not; and it is a pleasant spot, you
must acknowledge, in which to linger. The people with whom we are
concerned are (I hesitate to say it for fear of destroying the glamour)
an American family. Yes, it is best to confess it boldly--are American
millionaires. It is out--the worst is told! But why, may I ask in my
turn, is there anything so inherently distressing in the idea of an
American family (of millionaires) spending the summer in a
seventeenth-century Italian villa up in the Sabine hills--especially
when the rightful heir prefers _trente-et-un_ at Monte Carlo? Must they
of necessity spoil the romance? They are human, and have their passions
like the rest of us; and one of them at least is young, and men have
called her beautiful--yes, in this very garden.




                               CHAPTER I


IT was late and the studio was already well filled when two new-comers
were ushered into the room--one a woman still almost young, and still
(in a kindly light) beautiful; the other a girl emphatically young, her
youth riding triumphant over other qualities which in a few years would
become significant. A slight, almost portentous, hush had fallen over
the room as they crossed the threshold and shook hands with their host.
In a group near the door a young man--it was Laurence Sybert, the first
secretary of the American Embassy--broke off in the middle of a
sentence with the ejaculation: 'Ah, the Wheat Princess!'

'Be careful, Sybert! She will hear you,' the grey-haired
consul-general, who stood at his elbow, warned.

Sybert responded with a laugh and a half-shrug; but his tones, though
low, had carried, and the girl flashed upon the group a pair of vivid
hazel eyes containing a half-puzzled, half-questioning light, as though
she had caught the words but not the meaning. Her vague expression
changed to one of recognition; she nodded to the two diplomats as she
turned away to welcome a delegation of young lieutenants, brilliant in
blue and gold and shining boots.

'Who is she?' another member of the group inquired as he adjusted a
pair of eye-glasses and turned to scrutinize the American girl--she was
American to the most casual observer, from the piquant details of her
gown to the masterly fashion in which she handled her four young men.

'Don't you know?' There was just a touch of irony in Sybert's tone.
'Miss Marcia Copley, the daughter of the American Wheat King--I fancy
you've seen his name mentioned in the papers.'

'Well, well! And so that's Willard Copley's daughter?' He readjusted
his glasses and examined her again from this new point of view. 'She
isn't bad-looking,' was his comment. 'The Wheat Princess!' He repeated
the phrase with a laugh. 'I suppose she has come over to marry an
Italian prince and make the title good?'

The originator of the phrase shrugged anew, with the intimation that it
was nothing to him who Miss Marcia Copley married.

'