nowing I loved the Prince of Rittersheim, she worked only to make me
happy by a marriage with him.

"With her knowledge only, I slipped away from Court for a week and went
through a ceremony of marriage with the Prince at a little village
church hidden away in the mountains a hundred miles from Valoro.

"I married him in the dress and under the name of a simple peasant
woman, not knowing--as he did--that such a ceremony was utterly null
and void.

"Was I happy? I think he loved me then--a little." A soft, sad look
overspread the sweet old face; she gazed away across the lake in
silence for a few moments. It seemed that, even after all these years,
that time of love and falseness held some tender recollection still.

She came, as it were, to herself almost directly, and heaving a great
sigh, went on--

"Long before the week was ended, the Prince had told me I must return
to the Court, and take my place there as before.

"Of course I protested, and begged him to even then make our marriage
public; that I would give up the throne. Had I not a great fortune
left me by my father?

"Yes, that was the point that touched him, the great fortune. The
treasures of my late father were immense. Besides an enormous fortune
in money, mostly invested prudently in Europe, he possessed some of the
most valuable diamonds in the world. It had been his diversion to
collect them; he believed that they were always a most valuable
security, likely to increase in value, and therefore he did not grudge
the money sunk in them. The most valuable, reckoned to be worth a
million English pounds, were stored in a safe of special construction
made of steel. They were apart from the Crown Jewels, and were never
worn. Indeed most of them were unset. My father's theory was that
they were of immense value and could be carried in a small compass in
case of necessity.

"The Prince, of course, knew from me full well of these treasures, and
I firmly believe hungered for their possession from the very moment he
learned from my foolish lips of their existence. He forced me at the
end of the few days' honeymoon to return to the Court, and then from
that time forth I saw him only surreptitiously with the aid of
d'Altenstein, who was the aider and abettor of it all, yet loving me,
and working only, as she thought, poor soul, for my happiness.

"I was soon undeceived in my Prince. I soon learned that he was in
sore straits for money, and that