“My dearest!” he had cried fervently.

Sabine had said to the Princess that night, as they talked in their sitting-room: 

“Do you know, Morri, I have almost decided to marry this Englishman—­some day.  You have often told me I was foolish not to free myself from any bonds, however lightly they held me—­and I have never wanted to—­but now I do—­at once—­as soon as possible—­before—­my husband can suggest being free of me!  I have written to Mr. Parsons already—­and I suppose it will not take very long.  The laws there, I believe, are not so binding as in England—­” and then she stopped short.

“The laws—­where?” Moravia could not refrain from asking; her curiosity had at last won the day.

“In Scotland, Morri.  He was a Scotchman, not an American at all as every one supposes.”

The Princess’ eyes opened wide—­and she had to bite her lips to keep from asking more.

“I have never seen him since the day after we were married—­there cannot be any difficulty about getting a divorce—­can there?”

“None, I should think,” the Princess said shortly, and they kissed one another good-night and each went to her room.

But Moravia sat a long time, after her maid had left her, staring into space.

Fate was very cruel and contrary.  It gave her everything that most people could want, and refused her the one thing she desired herself.

“He adores Sabine—­who will trample on him—­she always rules everything—­and I would have been his sympathetic companion, and would have let him rule me—!” Then something she could not reconcile in her mind struck her.

If Sabine had never seen her husband since the day after she was married—­what had caused her to be so pale and sad and utterly changed when she came to her, Moravia, in Rome—­a year or more afterwards, and to have made her break entirely with her uncle and aunt?  The secret of her friend’s life lay in that year—­that year after she herself married and went off with her husband Girolamo to Italy—­the year which Sabine had spent in America—­alone.  But she knew very well that, fond as they were of one another, Sabine would probably never tell her about it.  So presently she got into bed and, sighing at the incongruity and inconsiderateness of circumstance, she turned out the light.

Sabine that same night read of further entertainments at Ostende in the New York Herald—­and shut her full, firm lips with an ominous force.  And so she and Henry had parted at the Carlsbad station next day with the understanding between them that, when Sabine could tell him that she was free, he would be at liberty to press his suit and she would give a favorable answer.

She thought of these past things now for a moment while she re-read Lord Fordyce’s letter.  It told her, there in her Heronac garden, in a hurried P.S. that a friend had joined him that moment at Havre, and clamored to be taken on the trip, too, claiming an old promise.  He was quite a nice young man—­but if she did not want any extra person, she was to wire to ——­, where they would arrive about eleven o’clock, and there this interloper should be ruthlessly marooned!  The post had evidently been going, and the P.S. must have been written in frightful haste after the advent of the friend—­for his name was not even given.