she glanced in the mirror, and her reflection caught and
held her attention a long moment. A curious, half-wistful, half-pathetic
expression crept into her eyes as the realization came to her sharply
that she was fading. There were lines and shadows and pallor that ought
not to be in the face of a woman of thirty-five. She smoothed the
vertical lines in her forehead, and then let her hands remain over her
face, while behind their cool smoothness her mind resumed its
troublesome thoughts.

It was not like meeting some new difficulty for which the strength is
fresh; it was struggling again with emotions that have repeatedly
exhausted one's endurance. Just as she had every hope that her husband
was cured of the gambler's fever, here he was down again with an even
more dangerous form of it. The man who knowingly risks is bad enough;
but the man who cannot see that he risks, and cannot understand how he
has lost is the hardest victim to cure. All of her capital was gone
except a small property which her brother-in-law, J. B. Randolph, held
for her in trust and on the income of which they now lived. Ten years
before she had had considerable money, enough for them to live not only
in comfort but in luxury. A large amount had been sunk in a Sicilian
sulphur mine, and to this investment she had given her consent, not yet
realizing her husband's lack of judgment. But aside from this, cards and
horse races and trips to Monaco had limited their living in luxury to a
periodic pleasure of three or four months. Now in order to open the
palace in Rome, they had to practise the most rigid economics the other
eight or nine months in their villa in the country.

Yet in spite of all, her compassion went out to Sandro. He was so gay,
so boy-like, that he acquired ascendancy over her sympathies in spite of
her judgment. And by the time her maid had coiled her great golden waves
of hair and helped her into a short, heavy skirt, a pair of stout boots,
a plain shirt-waist, and a rough, short coat and cap, her feeling of
resentment against him had passed. She drew on a pair of dogskin gloves,
and went out.

In the stables she found the prince helping to harness a pony.

"Are you going to drive to the village?" she asked as cheerfully as
though there had been no topic of distress.

"Yes; will you come with me?" he returned eagerly. She nodded her assent
and as they started down the road they talked easily of various things.
It was the prince