“You will win her back,” Felix said.  “I am sure of it.”

“I am willing to pay any price on earth,” Mr. Sabin answered.  “If they can forget the past I can.  I want you to remember this.  I want her to know it.  I want them to know it.  That is all, Felix.”

Mr. Sabin leaned back in his seat.  He had left this country last a stricken and defeated man, left it with the echoes of his ruined schemes crashing in his ears.  He came back to it a man with one purpose only, and that such a purpose as never before had guided him—­the love of a woman.  Was it a sign of age, he wondered, this return to the humanities?  His life had been full of great schemes, he had wielded often a gigantic influence, more than once he had made history.  And now the love of these things had gone from him.  Their fascination was powerless to quicken by a single beat his steady pulse.  Monarchy or republic—­what did he care?  It was Lucille he wanted, the woman who had shown him how sweet even defeat might be, who had made these three years of his life so happy that they seemed to have passed in one delightful dream.  Were they dead, annihilated, these old ambitions, the old love of great doings, or did they only slumber?  He moved in his seat uneasily.

At Euston the two men separated with a silent handshake.  Mr. Sabin drove to one of the largest and newest of the modern hotels de luxe.  He entered his name as Mr. Sabin—­the old exile’s hatred of using his title in a foreign country had become a confirmed habit with him—­and mingled freely with the crowds who thronged into the restaurant at night.  There were many faces which he remembered, there were a few who remembered him.  He neither courted nor shunned observation.  He sat at dinner-time at a retired table, and found himself watching the people with a stir of pleasure.  Afterwards he went round to a famous club, of which he had once been made a life member, but towards midnight he was wearied of the dull decorum of his surroundings, and returning to the hotel, sought the restaurant once more.  The stream of people coming in to supper was greater even than at dinner-time.  He found a small table, and ordered some oysters.  The sight of this bevy of pleasure-seekers, all apparently with multitudes of friends, might have engendered a sense of loneliness in a man of different disposition.  To Mr. Sabin his isolation was a luxury.  He had an uninterrupted opportunity of pursuing his favourite study.

There entered a party towards midnight, to meet whom the head-waiter himself came hurrying from the further end of the room, and whose arrival created a little buzz of interest.  The woman who formed the central figure of the little group had for two years known no rival either at Court or in Society.  She was the most beautiful woman in England, beautiful too with all the subtle grace of her royal descent.  There were women upon the stage whose faces might have borne comparison with hers, but there was not one who in a room would not have sunk into insignificance by her side.  Her movements, her carriage were incomparable—­the inherited gifts of a race of women born in palaces.