Oh! the pity and sadness of it all!  For in her small and trembling hands she was clutching with pathetic tenacity a small, brown wallet which contained a fortune worthy of a princess.

She looked eagerly into her husband’s face, dreading the scowl, the outburst of anger or jealousy mayhap with which of late, alas! he had so oft greeted her arrival.  But as was his wont, he stood with his back to the lighted room, and she could not read the expression of that one cyclops-like eye, which to-night appeared more sinister than ever beneath the thick perruque and broad-brimmed hat.

“I am sorry to be so late,” she said timidly, “the evening repast at the Court was interminable and Mistress de Chavasse full of gossip.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he replied, “am I not used to seeing that your social duties oft make you forget your husband?”

“You are unjust, Amede,” she rejoined.

She entered the little parlor and stood beside the table, making no movement to divest herself of her dripping cloak, or to sit down, nor indeed did her husband show the slightest inclination to ask her to do either.  He had closed the door behind her, and followed her to the center of the room.  Was it by accident or design that as he reached the table he threw his broad-brimmed hat, down with such an unnecessary flourish of the arm that he knocked over one of the heavy pewter candlesticks, so that it rolled down upon the floor, causing the tallow candle to sputter and die out with a weird and hissing sound?

Only one dim yellow light now illumined the room, it shone full into the pallid face of the young wife standing some three paces from the table, whilst Prince Amede d’Orleans’ face between her and the light, was once more in deep shadow.

“You are unjust,” she repeated firmly.  “Have I not run the gravest possible risks for your sake, and those without murmur or complaint, for the past six months?  Did I not compromise my reputation for you by meeting you alone ... of nights? ...”

“I was laboring under the idea, my wench, that you were doing all that because you cared for me,” he retorted with almost brutal curtness, “and because you had the desire to become the Princess d’Orleans; that desire is now gratified and ...”

He had not really meant to be unkind.  There was of a truth no object to be gained by being brutal to her now.  But that wallet, which she held so tightly clutched, acted as an irritant to his nerves.  Never of very equable temperament and holding all women in lofty scorn, he chafed against all parleyings with his wife, now that the goal of his ambition was so close at hand.

She winced at the insult, and the tears which she fain would have hidden from him, rose involuntarily to her eyes.

“Ah!” she sighed, “if you only knew how little I care for that title of princess! ...  Did you perchance think that I cared? ...  Nay! how gladly would I give up all thought of ever bearing that proud appellation, in exchange for a few more happy illusions such as I possessed three months ago.”