“I dare say—­he—­looked like that—­he ought to suit Daisy,” and then Sabine felt she had been spiteful and tried to divert matters by asking where Mr. Cloudwater was.

“Papa will be in in a moment.  He has been dying for you to come back.”  But the Princess had not done with Mr. Arranstoun yet.  The Van der Horn coterie had rung with his exploits on her return from Italy, and the lurid picture had interested her deeply.

“I do wish I had been at Heronac, Sabine, I would love to have seen that young man.  Daisy’s aunt told me he was wild about her niece, and at one moment she thought everything was settled—­it must have been after he came back from Brittany—­and then he went off to England—­probably he does not like to speak out until he is free.”

Sabine felt that strange sensation she had experienced once before, of heart sinking—­and then, furious with herself, she mastered it and became more determined than ever to carry out her intention of growing accustomed to hearing of, and talking about Michael calmly.

“You are sure to meet him in England,” she said; “he is a great friend of Henry’s.”

But afterwards, when she was alone resting in her cosy room before dinner, she deliberately pulled the blue despatch-box toward her and looked at some of its contents, while tears gathered in her eyes, which even the cynical thoughts which she was calling to her aid could not quite suppress.  Would things have been different if she had been able to send Michael the letter which she had written to him in the September of 1907?  The letter she had asked Mr. Parsons, who was again in London, to have delivered to him, into his hand—­and which came back to her in Paris with the information from the old lawyer that Mr. Arranstoun had left England for the wilds of China and Tibet, and might not get any letters for more than a year.  She remembered how that night she had cried herself to sleep with misery, and with a growing regret at having left Michael, and a pitiful longing just to be clasped once more in his strong arms and comforted.  Oh! the hateful wretched memories!  To have gone off at once to China like that proved his callousness and indifference.  Then, in spite of herself, her thoughts would review all he had said to her on that morning in the garden.  No—­there had not been one word of meaning, not even any suggestion of regret that she was practically engaged to Henry.  There had been some faint allusion to people being fools—­and brutes when young, but not that they would wish to repair the faults which they had committed then.  The whole thing was plain—­he had never really cared an atom for her.  He had been only affected by passion, even on her wedding night when he was pouring love vows into her startled ears.

“He was probably horribly surprised to come upon me at Heronac,” her thoughts now ran, “and then just sampled me—­and went off as soon as he could—­back to Daisy in Paris!”