“How delightful you are!”

“I am only echoing Sabine, who has all the quaint ideas.  In that pretty young baby’s head she thinks out evolution, and cause and effect, and heredity, and every sort of deep tiresome thing!”

“Have you heard from her to-day, Princess?” Henry’s voice was a little anxious.  She had not written to him.

“Yes.”

“She seems to be in rather a queer mood.  What has caused it, do you know, dear friend?”

“I have not the slightest idea—­it has puzzled me, too,” and Moravia’s voice was perplexed.  “Ever since the ball at your sister’s she has been changed in some way.  Had you any quarrel or—­jar, or difference of opinion?  Don’t think I am asking from curiosity—­I am really concerned.”

Henry’s distinguished face grew pinched-looking; it cut like a knife to have his vague unadmitted fears put into words.

“We had no discussions of any kind.  She was particularly sweet, and spent nearly the whole evening with me, as you know.  Is it something about her husband, do you think, which is troubling her?  But it cannot be that, because in her letter of two days ago she said the proceedings had been started and she would be free perhaps by Christmastime, as all was being hurried through.”

Moravia gave an exclamation of surprise.

“Sabine is certainly very strange.  Can you believe it?  She has never mentioned the matter to me since we returned, and once when I spoke of it, she put the subject aside.  She did not ‘wish to remember it,’ she said.”

“It is evidently that, then, and we must have patience with the dear little girl.  The husband must have been an unmitigated wretch to have left such a deep scar upon her life.”

“But she never saw him from the day after she was married!” Moravia exclaimed; and then pulled herself up short, glancing at Henry furtively.  What had Sabine told him?  Probably no more than she had told her—­she felt the subject was dangerous ground, and it would be wiser to avoid further discussion upon the matter.  So she remarked casually: 

“No, after all, I do not believe it has anything to do with the husband; it is just a mood.  She has always had moods for years.  I know she is looking forward awfully to our all going to her for Christmas.  Then you will be able to clear away all your clouds.”

But this conversation left Henry very troubled, and Pere Anselme’s words about the cinders still being red kept recurring to him with increasing pain.

Sabine had been at Heronac for ten days when the old priest got back to his flock.  It was toward the end of November, and the weather was one raging storm of rain and wind.  The surf boiled round the base of the Castle and the waves rose as giant foes ready to attack.  It comforted the mistress of it to stand upon the causeway bridge and get soaking wet—­or to sit in one of the mullioned windows of her great sitting-room and watch the angry water thundering beneath.  And here the Pere Anselme found her on the morning after his return.