y through
her hands. She knew that the prince--her husband--was waiting for it
even now. Doubtless, he was counting the hours when his young wife's
vast fortune would come to him as the realization of all his dreams.

In spite of her present disbelief in his love, in spite of the bitter
knowledge that her own had waned, Sue had no misgivings as yet as to the
honor, the truth, the loyalty of the man whose name she now bore. Her
illusions were gone, her romance had become dull reality, but to one
thought she clung with all the tenacity of despair, and that was to the
illusion that Prince Amede d'Orleans was the selfless patriot, the
regenerator of downtrodden France, which he represented himself to be.

Because of that belief she welcomed the wealth, which she would this day
be able to place in his hands. Her own girlish dreams had vanished, but
her temperament was far too romantic and too poetic not to recreate
illusions, even when the old ones had been so ruthlessly shattered.

But this recreation would occur anon--not just now, not at the very
moment when her heart ached with an intolerable pain at thought of the
sorrow which she had caused to her one friend. Presently, no doubt, when
she met her husband, when his usual grandiloquent phrases had once more
succeeded in arousing her enthusiasm for the cause which he pleaded, she
would once more feel serene and happy at thought of the help which she,
with her great wealth, would be giving him; for the nonce the whole
transaction grated on her sense of romance; money passing from hand to
hand, a man waiting somewhere in the dark to receive wealth from a
woman's hand.

Master Skyffington desired her to look over the papers, ere she signed
the formal receipt for them, but she waved them gently aside:

"Quite unnecessary, kind master," she said decisively, "since I receive
them at your hands."

She bent over the document which the lawyer now placed before her, and
took the pen from him.

"Where shall I sign?" she asked.

Sir Marmaduke and Editha de Chavasse watched her keenly, as with a bold
stroke of the pen she wrote her name across the receipt.

"Now the papers, please, master," said Lady Sue peremptorily.

But the prudent lawyer had still a word of protest to enter here.

"My dear young lady," he said tentatively, awed in spite of himself by
the self-possessed behavior of a maid whom up to now he had regarded as
a mere child, "let me, as a man of vast experien