“Oh, Faustina!  How could you do it!” moaned the princess.  “It is too horrible—­it is not to be believed—­”

“I loved him, I love him still.”

Princess Montevarchi fell into a chair and burst into tears, burying her face in her hands and sobbing aloud.

“If you are going to cry, Guendalina, you had better go away,” said her husband, who was now as angry as his mean nature would permit him to be.  She was so much accustomed to obey that she left the room, crying as she went, and casting back a most sorrowful look at Faustina.

Montevarchi shut the door and, coming back, seized his daughter’s arm and shook it violently.

“Fool!” he cried angrily, unable to find any other word to express his rage.

Faustina said nothing but tried to push him away, her bright eyes gleaming with contempt.  Her silence exasperated the old man still further.  Like most very cowardly men he could be brutal to women when he was angry.  It seemed to him that the girl, by her folly, had dashed from him the last great satisfaction of his life at the very moment when it was within reach.  He could have forgiven her for ruining herself, had she done so; he could not forgive her for disappointing his ambition; he knew that one word of the story she had told would make the great marriage impossible, and he knew that she had the power to speak that word when she pleased as well as the courage to do so.

“Fool!” he repeated, and before she could draw back, he struck her across the mouth with the back of his hand.

A few drops of bright red blood trickled from her delicate lips.  With an instinctive movement she pressed her handkerchief to the wound.  Montevarchi snatched it roughly from her hand and threw it across the room.  From his eyes she guessed that he would strike her again if she remained.  With a look of intense hatred she made a supreme effort, and concentrating the whole strength of her slender frame wrenched herself free.

“Coward!” she cried, as he reeled backwards; then, before he could recover himself, she was gone and he was left alone.

He was terribly angry, and at the same time his ideas were confused, so that he hardly understood anything but the main point of her story, that she had been with Gouache on that night when Corona had brought her home.  He began to reason again.  Corona knew the truth, of course, and her husband knew it too.  Montevarchi realised that he had already taken his revenge for their complicity, before knowing that they had injured him.  His overwrought brain was scarcely capable of receiving another impression.  He laughed aloud in a way that was almost hysterical.

“All!” he cried in sudden exultation.  “All—­even to their name—­ but the other—­” His face changed quickly and he sank into his chair and buried his face in his hands, as he thought of all he had lost through Faustina’s folly.  And yet, the harm might be repaired—­no one knew except—­