is just as though
there was no one else on this balcony but himself--no one else exists
for him!"
"Why, Sabine, you are severe! He looks to me to be a pretty
considerably nice man--and he is only reading the paper as I have been
doing myself," Mr. Cloudwater rejoined. "Perhaps he is the English
nobleman who I read was expected to-day--Lord Fordyce, the paper
said--and wasn't that the name of rather a prominent English politician
who had to go into the Upper House last year when his father died--and
it was considered he would be a loss to the Commons?"
"I really don't know. I don't take the slightest interest in them or
their politics. Ah! here is Moravia----" and both rose to meet a very
charming lady who drove up in a victoria and got out.
She had all the perfection of detail which characterizes the very
best-dressed American woman--and she had every attraction except,
perhaps, a voice--but even that she knew how to modulate and disguise,
so that it was no wonder that the Princess Torniloni passed for one of
the most beautiful women in Rome or Paris, or Cairo or New York,
whenever she graced any of the cities with her presence. She was a
widow, too, and very rich. The Prince, her husband, had been dead for
nearly two years, and she was wearing grays and whites and mauves.
He had been a brute, too, but unlike her friend, Mrs. Howard's husband,
he had had the good taste to be killed riding in a steeplechase, and so
all went well, and the pretty Princess was free to wander the world over
with her indulgent father.
"It is just too lovely for words up in those woods, papa," she said,
"and I have had my tea in a dear little chalet restaurant. You did not
wait for me, I hope?"
They assured her they had not done so, and she sat down in a comfortable
chair. Her arrival caused a flutter among the other occupants of the
terrace, and even the Englishman glanced up. This group had at last made
some impression it would seem upon the retina of his eye, for he looked
deliberately at them and realized that the two women were quite worthy
of his scrutiny.
"But I hate Americans," he said to himself. "They are such actresses,
you never know where you are with them--these two, though, appear some
of the best."
Presently they went into the hotel, passing him very closely--and for a
second his eyes met the violet ones of Sabine Howard, and he was
conscious that he felt distinctly interested, much to his disgust.
But, aft
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