“Mistress de Chavasse?” he said inquiringly.

“Mistress de Chavasse is a member of the family,” replied Sir Marmaduke, “the business can be transacted in her presence.”

“Nothing therefore remains to be said, my dear young lady,” rejoined Master Skyffington, once more speaking directly to Sue and placing his lean hands with fingers outstretched, over the bundles of papers lying before him.  “Here are your securities, your grants, moneys and receipts, worth L500,000 of the present currency of this realm....  These I, in mine own name and that of my honored friend and patron, Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse, do hereby hand over to you.  You will, I pray, verify and sign the receipt in proper and due form.”

He began sorting and overlooking the papers, muttering half audibly the while, as he transferred each bundle from his own side of the table to that beside which Lady Sue was sitting: 

“The deeds of property in Holland ... hem....  Receipt of moneys deposited at the bank of Amsterdam....  The same from the Bank of Vienna....  Grant of monopoly for the hemp trade in Russia.... hem ...”

Thus he mumbled for some time, as these papers, representing a fortune, passed out of his keeping into those of a young maid but recently out of her teens.  Sue watched him silently and placidly, just as she had done throughout this momentous interview, which was, of a truth, the starting point of her independent life.

Her face expressed neither joy nor excitement of any kind.  She knew that all the wealth which now lay before her, would only pass briefly through her hands.  She knew that the prince—­her husband—­was waiting for it even now.  Doubtless, he was counting the hours when his young wife’s vast fortune would come to him as the realization of all his dreams.

In spite of her present disbelief in his love, in spite of the bitter knowledge that her own had waned, Sue had no misgivings as yet as to the honor, the truth, the loyalty of the man whose name she now bore.  Her illusions were gone, her romance had become dull reality, but to one thought she clung with all the tenacity of despair, and that was to the illusion that Prince Amede d’Orleans was the selfless patriot, the regenerator of downtrodden France, which he represented himself to be.

Because of that belief she welcomed the wealth, which she would this day be able to place in his hands.  Her own girlish dreams had vanished, but her temperament was far too romantic and too poetic not to recreate illusions, even when the old ones had been so ruthlessly shattered.

But this recreation would occur anon—­not just now, not at the very moment when her heart ached with an intolerable pain at thought of the sorrow which she had caused to her one friend.  Presently, no doubt, when she met her husband, when his usual grandiloquent phrases had once more succeeded in arousing her enthusiasm for the cause which he pleaded, she would once more feel serene and happy at thought of the help which she, with her great wealth, would be giving him; for the nonce the whole transaction grated on her sense of romance; money passing from hand to hand, a man waiting somewhere in the dark to receive wealth from a woman’s hand.