“I am afraid I must go,” he said gravely at length.

“Must—­a prince?”

“It is on that account,” he replied.

“Then I am to conclude that you are more devoted to your peasants than to—­me?”

He assured her to the contrary.  She tried once again, but nothing could move him from his decision.  Etta was perhaps a small-minded person, and as such failed to attach due importance to this proof that her power over him was limited.  It ceased, in fact, to exist as soon as it touched that strong sense of duty which is to be found in many men and in remarkably few women.

It almost seemed as if the abrupt departure of her lover was in some sense a relief to Etta Sydney Bamborough.  For, while he, lover-like, was grave and earnest during the small remainder of the evening, she continued to be sprightly and gay.  The last he saw of her was her smiling face at the window as her carriage drove away.

Arrived at the little house in Upper Brook Street, Maggie and Etta went into the drawing-room, where biscuits and wine were set out.  Their maids came and took their cloaks away, leaving them alone.

“Paul and I are engaged,” said Etta suddenly.  She was picking the withered flowers from her dress and throwing them carelessly on the table.

Maggie was standing with her back to her, with her two hands on the mantel-piece.  She was about to turn round when she caught sight of her own face in the mirror, and that which she saw there made her change her intention.

“I am not surprised,” she said, in an even voice, standing like a statue.  “I congratulate you.  I think he is—­nice.”

“You also think he is too good for me,” said Etta, with a little laugh.  There was something in that laugh—­a ring of wounded vanity, the wounded vanity of a bad woman who is in the presence of her superior.

“No!” answered Maggie slowly, tracing the veins of the marble across the mantel-piece.  “No—­o, not that.”

Etta looked up at her.  It was rather singular that she did not ask what Maggie did think.  Perhaps she was afraid of a certain British honesty which characterized the girl’s thought and speech.  Instead she rose and indulged in a yawn which may have been counterfeit, but it was a good counterfeit.

“Will you have a biscuit?” she said.

“No, thanks.”

“Then shall we go to bed?”

“Yes.”

CHAPTER IX

THE PRINCE

The village of Osterno, lying, or rather scrambling, along the banks of the river Oster, is at no time an exhilarating spot.  It is a large village, numbering over nine hundred souls, as the board affixed to its first house testifieth in incomprehensible Russian figures.