Henry had not spent his life maneuvring love affairs with women, and was not very clever at manipulating circumstance.  He fretted and fumed at not getting his desired tete-a-tete, but with all the will was too hedged in by conventionality and a sense of politeness to force matters, as his friend, Michael Arranstoun, would have done with high-handed unconcern.  Thus, his cure at Carlsbad was drawing to a close before he again spent an afternoon quite alone with Sabine Howard.  They had gone to the Aberg to tea, and the Princess had expressed herself too tired to walk back, and had got into the waiting carriage, making Cranley Beaton accompany her.  She was not in a perfectly amiable temper.  Lord Fordyce attracted her strongly, and it was plain to be seen he had only eyes for Sabine—­who cared for him not at all.  The Princess found Cranley Beaton absolutely tiresome—­no better than the New York Herald, she thought pettishly, or the Continental Daily Mail—­to be with!  The waters were getting on her nerves, too; she would be glad to leave and go to Sorrento with that Cupid among infants, Girolamo.  Sabine had better divorce her horror of a husband, and marry the man and have done with it!

Now the walk from the Aberg down through the woods is a peculiarly delightful one and, even in the season at Carlsbad, not over-crowded by people.  Henry Fordyce felt duly elated at the prospect, and Mrs. Howard had an air of pensive mischief in her violet eyes.  Lord Fordyce, who had been accustomed for years to making speeches for his party, and was known as a ready orator, found himself rather silent, and even a little nervous, for the first hundred yards or so.  She looked so bewitching, he thought, in her fresh white linen, showing up the round peachiness of her young cheeks, and those curling, childish, brown lashes making their shadow.  He was overcome with a desire to kiss her.  She was so supremely healthy and delectable.  He felt he had been altogether a fool in his estimate of the serious necessities of life hitherto.  Woman was now one of them—­and this woman supremely so.  Why, if she could be freed from bonds, should she not become his wife?  But he felt it might be wiser not to be too precipitate about suggesting the thing to her.  She had certainly given him no indication that she would receive the idea favorably, and appeared to be of the type of character which could not be coerced.  He felt very glad Michael Arranstoun had not responded to his pressing request to join him.  It would be far better that that irritatingly attractive specimen of manhood should not step upon the scene, until he himself had some definite hope of affairs being satisfactorily settled.

They began their talk upon the lightest subjects, and gradually drifted into one of the discussions of emotions in the abstract which are so fascinating—­and so dangerous—­and which require skill to direct and continue.

Mrs. Howard held that pleasure could alone come from harmony of body and spirit, while Lord Fordyce maintained that wild discords could also produce it, and that it could not be defined as governed by any law.