The Princess shrugged her shoulders.

“No!” she answered.  “He is a coward at heart, but he has enough vanity, I believe, to keep him from doing anything foolish.  All the same, I think it is wiser not to leave him alone here.”

“He would not stay,” Forrest remarked.  “He told me so only this morning.”

“You suggested leaving?” the Princess asked.

Forrest nodded.

“I couldn’t help it,” he said, a little sullenly.  “There is something about these great empty rooms, and the silence of the place, that’s getting on my nerves.  I start every time that great front-door bell clangs, or I hear an unfamiliar footstep in the hall.  God!  What fools we have been,” he added, with a sudden bitter strength.  “I couldn’t have believed that I could ever have done anything so clumsy.  Fancy giving ourselves away to a fool like Engleton, a self-opinionated young cub scarcely out of his cradle.”

He felt his damp forehead.  The Princess was watching him curiously.

“Don’t be a fool, Nigel,” she said.  “We underrated Engleton, that was all.  If ever a man looked an idiot, he did, and you must remember that we were in a corner.  Yet,” she added, leaning a little forward in her chair and gazing with hard, set face into the fire, “it was foolish of me.  With Jeanne to play with, I ought to have had no such difficulties.  I never counted upon the tradespeople being so unreasonable.  If they had let me finish the season it would have been all right.”

Forrest walked restlessly across the room, and stood for a moment looking out of the window.  Outside, the wind had suddenly changed.  The sunshine had departed, and a grey fog was blowing in from the sea.  He turned away with a shiver.

“What a cursed place this is!” he muttered.  “I’ve half a mind even now to turn my back upon it and to run.”

The Princess watched his pale face scornfully.

“I thought, Nigel,” she said, “that you were a more reasonable person.  Remember that if we show the white feather now, it is the end of everything—­the Colonies, if you like, or a little cheap watering-place at the best.  As for me, I might have a better chance of brazening it out, but remember that I could never afford to be seen in the company of a suspected person.”

“It was the fear of losing you,” he muttered, “which made me so rash.”

The Princess laughed very softly.

“My dear friend,” she said, “I do not believe you.  I may seem to you sometimes very foolish, but at least I understand this.  Life with you is self, self, self, and nothing more.  You have scarcely a generous instinct, scarcely a spark of real affection left in you.”

“And yet—­” he began quietly.

“And yet,” she whispered, repulsing him with a little gesture, but with a suddenly altered look in her face, “and yet we women are fools!”