nt at once to Marie, and taking her hand,
kissed it tenderly. "My darling, this has been very trying for you," he
said. "You are not strong. Now it is my wish that you go to your room
and lie down. Soon I will come to you, but first I must talk for a
little while with Miss Grant."

Until an hour ago he had called her Mary.

With an arm round her waist, Angelo lifted Marie from the hammock, and
began to lead her toward the door, but she resisted feebly. "Angelo, I
can't go!" she stammered. "I can't leave Mary with you--like this. I
must stay. I----"

"Dear one, I wish you to go," Angelo insisted gently. "It is right for
you to go. Trust me to be neither cruel nor unkind to Miss Grant."

"But----"

"There is no 'but.'" Angelo had her at the door; and resigning herself,
with one backward look at Mary imploring pardon and mercy, the Princess
went out.

Mary saw, though she scarcely troubled to read the look. She pitied
Marie, but pitied her as a coward. The girl meant to be loyal, yet
somehow, in the end, to save her own happiness. But she could not plan
for the future. She felt dazed, broken, as if she had been on the rack
and was now to be tortured again.

XXXIII

In a moment Angelo had softly closed the glass door after Marie, and had
come back. He stood before Mary, looking down at her. At first she did
not raise her eyes, but his drew hers to them. They gazed at her with a
cold anger that was like fire burning behind a screen of ice. And the
ice made the fire more terrible.

His look bade her rise and stand before him, a culprit, but she would
not. She sat still, in the same chair where she had sat happily writing
to Vanno a few hours before. Though she trembled, she faced the Prince
without shrinking outwardly. Perhaps to Angelo's eyes she appeared
defiant.

"Does my brother know?" he asked.

"He knows--that I was at a convent-school." In spite of herself Mary
choked in the words. She stammered slightly, and a wave of giddiness
swept over her. With a supreme effort she controlled herself, looking up
at Angelo's tall figure, which to her loomed Titanic.

"I mean does he know the rest?"

"There is nothing else to know. I did not do any of those things Miss
Bland talked about."

"Very well. But you must see that you will have to prove that, before
you can show yourself worthy to be my brother's wife."

It was on Mary's lips to exclaim: "I can prove it easily!" But just in
time she remembered