And all the way to Madrid, as he flew along in his automobile, his heart rejoiced at this one sentence—­“Yes, Hector, know that I love you!”

The rest of the world did not seem to matter very much.  How fortunate it is that so often Providence lets us live on the pleasure of the moment!

He sat on her left hand—­the Austrian Prince was on her right—­and studiously all through the repast he tried to follow her wishes and the law he had laid down for himself as the pattern of his future conduct.

He was gravely polite, he never turned the conversation away from the general company, including her neighbors in it all the time, and only when he was certain she was not noticing did he feast his eyes upon her face.

She was looking supremely beautiful.  If possible, whiter than usual, and there was a shadow in her eyes as of mystery, which had not been there before—­and while their pathos wrung his heart, he could not help perceiving their added beauty.  And he had planted this change there—­he, and he alone.  He admired her perfect taste in dress—­she was all in pure white, muslin and laces, and he knew it was of the best, and the creation of the greatest artist.

She looked just what his wife ought to look, infinitely refined and slender and stately and fair.

Morella Winmarleigh would seem as a large dun cow beside her.

Then suddenly they both remembered it was only a week this night since they had met.  Only seven days in which fate had altered all their lives.

The Austrian Prince wondered to himself what had happened.  He had not been blind to the situation at Armenonville, and here they seemed like polite hostess and guest, nothing more.

“They are English, and they are very well bred, and they are very good actors,” he thought.  “But, mon Dieu! were I ce beau jeune homme!”

And so it had come to an end—­the feast and the Tziganes playing, and Theodora will always be haunted by that last wild Hungarian tune.  Music, which moved every fibre of her being at all times, to-night was a torture of pain and longing.  And he was so near, so near and yet so far, and it seemed as if the music meant love and separation and passionate regret, and the last air most passionate of all, and before the final notes died away Hector bent over to her, and he whispered: 

“I have got your letter, and I love you, and I will obey its every wish.  You must trust me unto death.  Darling, good-night, but never good-bye!”

And she had not answered, but her breath had come quickly, and she had looked once in his eyes and then away into the night.

And so they shook hands politely and parted.  And next day Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Brown crossed over to England.

XVI

It was pouring with rain the evening Lord Bracondale arrived from Paris at the family mansion in St. James’s Square.  He had only wired at the last moment to his mother, too late to change her plans; she was unfortunately engaged to take Morella Winmarleigh to the opera, and was dining early at that lady’s house, so she could only see him for a few moments in her dressing-room before she started.