“Yes,” she said, vaguely disturbed.  He drew forth his pocketbook and took from its interior a small bit of paper, which he handed to her, a shamed smile in his eyes.  She read it at a glance and handed it back.  A faint touch of red came into her cheeks.

“How very odd!  Why should you have kept that bit of paper all these months?”

“I will admit that the announcement of the approaching nuptials of two persons whom I had met so casually may seem a strange thing to cherish, but I am a strange person.  You have been married nearly three months,” he said reflectively.  “Three months and two days, to be precise.”

She laughed outright, a bewitching, merry laugh that startled him.

“How accurate you would be,” she exclaimed.  “It would be a highly interesting achievement, Mr. Chase, if it were only borne out by facts.  You see, I have not been married so much as three minutes.”

He stared at her, uncomprehending.

She went on:  “Do you consider it bad luck to postpone a wedding?”

Involuntarily he drew his horse closer to hers.  There was a new gleam in his eyes; her blood leaped at the challenge they carried.

“Very bad luck,” he said quite steadily; “for the bridegroom.”

In an instant they seemed to understand something that had not even been considered before.  She looked away, but he kept his eyes fast upon her half-turned face, finding delight in the warm tint that surged so shamelessly to her brow.  He wondered if she could hear the pounding of his heart above the thud of the horses’ feet.

“We are to be married in June,” she said somewhat defiantly.  Some of the light died in his eyes.  “Prince Karl was very ill.  They thought he might die.  His—­his studies—­his music, I mean, proved more than he could carry.  It—­it is not serious.  A nervous break-down,” she explained haltingly.

“You mean that he—­” he paused before finishing the sentence—­“collapsed?”

“Yes.  It was necessary to postpone the marriage.  He will be quite well again, they say—­by June.”

Chase thought of the small, nervous, excitable prince and in his mind there arose a great doubt.  They might pronounce him cured, but would it be true?  “I hope he may be fully recovered, for your sake,” he managed to say.

“Thank you.”  After a long pause, she turned to him again and said:  “We are to live in Paris for a year or two at least.”

Then Chase understood.  Prince Karl would not be entirely recovered in June.  He did not ask, but he knew in some strange way that his physicians were there and that it would be necessary for him to be near them.

“He is in Paris now?”

“No,” she answered, and that was all.  He waited, but she did not expand her confidence.

“So it is to be in June?” he mused.

“In June,” she said quietly.  He sighed.

“I am more than sorry that you are a princess,” he said boldly.