she was awake now and knew where she had been drifting.
And so love had come at last, and indeed, indeed it meant life. This
blast had struck her, and she had been blind in not recognizing it at
once.

But oh, how sweet it was!--love--and it seemed as if it could make
everything good and fair. If he and she who loved each other could have
belonged to each other, surely they might have shed joy and gladness
and kindness on all around.

Then she lay on her bed and did not try to reason any more; she only
knew she loved Hector Bracondale with all her heart and being, and that
she was married to Josiah Brown.

And what would the days be when she never saw him? And he, too, he would
be sad--and then there was poor Josiah--who was so generous to her. He
could not help being vulgar and unsympathetic, and her duty was to make
him happy. Well, she could do that, she would try her very best to do
that.

But thrills ran through her with the recollection of the moments in the
drive to Paris--oh, why had no one told her or warned her all her life
about this good thing love? At last, worn out with all emotions, sleep
gently closed her eyes.

And fate up above laughed no more. Her sport was over for a time, she
had made a sorry ending to their happy day.

XIV

Josiah had been too much fatigued on his machinery hunt with Mr.
Clutterbuck R. Tubbs. They had lunched too richly, he said, and stood
about too long, and so all the Sunday he was peevish and fretful, and
required Theodora's constant attention. She must sit by his bedside all
the morning, and drive round and round all the afternoon.

He told her she was not looking well. These excursions did not suit
either of them, and he would be glad to get to England.

He asked a few questions about Versailles, and Theodora vouchsafed no
unnecessary information. Nor did she tell him of her father's
good-fortune. The widow had expressly asked her not to. She wished it to
appear in the New York _Herald_ first of all, she said. And they could
have a regular rejoicing at the banquet on Monday night.

"Men are all bad," she had told Theodora during their ante-dinner chat.
"Selfish brutes most of them; but nature has arranged that we happen to
want them, and it is not for me to go against nature. Your father is a
gentleman and he keeps me from yawning, and I have enough money to be
able to indulge that and whatever other caprices I may have acquired; so
I think we shall be hap