Nothing could have been more unhappy than was the state of these two young people in their separate homes.  In the old days when she used to try and banish the too lenient thoughts of Michael, she had always the picture of his selfishness and violent passion to call up to her aid—­but that was blotted out now, and in its place there was the memory that it was he, not she, who had behaved nobly and decided to sacrifice all happiness to be true to his friend.  Sometimes when she first got back to Heronac she, too, allowed herself to dream of their good-bye, and the cruel sweetness of that brief moment of bliss, and she would go through strange thrills and quivers and stretch out her arms in the firelight and whisper his name aloud—­“Michael—­my dear love!”

She could not even bear the watching, affectionate eyes of Madame Imogen and sent her to Paris on a month’s holiday.  The Pere Anselme had been away when she arrived, at the deathbed of an old sister at Versailles, so she was utterly alone in her grim castle, with only the waves.

The once looked-for letters from Henry were a dreaded tie now.  She would have to answer them!—­and as his grew more tender and loving, so hers unconsciously became more cold, with a note of bitterness in them sometimes of which she was unaware.

And Henry, in Paris with Moravia, wondered and grieved, and grew sick at heart as the days went on.  He had let his political ambitions slide, and lingered there as being nearer his adored one, instead of going home.

Now love was playing his sad pranks with all of them, and the Princess Torniloni was receiving her share.  The constant companionship of Henry had not made her feelings more calm.  She was really in love with him with all that was best and greatest in her sweet nature, and it was changing her every idea.  She was even getting a little vicarious happiness out of being a sympathetic friend, and as he grew sad and restless, so she became more gentle and tender, and watched over him like a fond mother with a child.  She would not look ahead or face the fact that he had grown too dear; she was living her Indian summer, she told herself, and would not see its end.

“How awfully good you are to me, Princess,” he told her one afternoon, as they walked together in the bright frosty air about a week after Sabine had left them.  “I never have known so kind a woman.  You seem to think of gentle and sympathetic things to say before one even asks for your sympathy.  How greatly I misjudged your nation before I knew you and Sabine!”

“No, I don’t think you did misjudge us in general,” she replied.  “Lots of us are horrid when we are on the make, and those are the sorts you generally meet in England.  We would not go there, you see, if it was not to get something.  We can have everything material as good, if not better, in our own country, only we can’t get your repose, or your atmosphere, and we are growing so much cleverer and richer every year that we hate to think there is something we can’t buy, and so we come over to England and set to work to grab it from you!”