“I suppose she is married to him.  That is the simplest explanation of the mystery.”

“Impossible!  What can you mean?  If she ever marries living man, she will marry you.”

“Then she will never marry living man,” said Stangrave to himself.  “Good-bye, my dear fellow; I have an engagement at the Traveller’s.”  And away went Stangrave, leaving Claude sorely puzzled, but little dreaming of the powder-magazine into which he had put a match.

But he was puzzled still more that night, when by the latest post a note came—­

“From Stangrave!” said Claude.  “Why, in the name of all wonders!”—­and he read:—­

“Good-bye.  I am just starting for the Continent, on sudden and urgent business.  What my destination is I hardly can tell you yet.  You will hear from me in the course of the summer.”

Claude’s countenance fell, and the note fell likewise.  Sabina snatched it up, read it, and gave La Cordifiamma a look which made her spring from the sofa, and snatch it in turn.

She read it through, with trembling hands, and blanching cheeks, and then dropped fainting upon the floor.

They laid her on the sofa, and while they were recovering her, Claude told Sabina the only clue which he had to the American’s conduct, namely, that afternoon’s conversation.

Sabina shook her head over it; for to her, also, the American’s explanation had suggested itself.  Was Marie Thurnall’s wife?  Or did she—­it was possible, however painful—­stand to him in some less honourable relation, which she would fain forget now, in a new passion for Stangrave?  For that Marie loved Stangrave, Sabina knew well enough.

The doubt was so ugly that it must be solved; and when she had got the poor thing safe into her bedroom she alluded to it as gently as she could.

Marie sprang up in indignant innocence.

“He!  Whatever he may be to others, I know not:  but to me he has been purity and nobleness itself—­a brother, a father!  Yes; if I had no other reason for trusting him, I should love him for that alone; that however tempted he may have been, and Heaven knows he was tempted, he could respect the honour of his friend, though that friend lay sleeping in a soldier’s grave ten thousand miles away.”

And Marie threw herself upon Sabina’s neck, and under the pressure of her misery sobbed out to her the story of her life.  What it was need not be told.  A little common sense, and a little knowledge of human nature, will enable the reader to fill up for himself the story of a beautiful slave.

Sabina soothed her, and cheered her; and soothed and cheered her most of all by telling her in return the story of her own life; not so dark a one, but almost as sad and strange.  And poor Marie took heart, when she found in her great need a sister in the communion of sorrows.

“And you have been through all this, so beautiful and bright as you are!  You whom I should have fancied always living the life of the humming-bird:  and yet not a scar or a wrinkle has it left behind!”