Well, what can you expect of such a temperament—­such a race?  Mary’s thoughts travelled confusedly towards—­and through—­some big and dreadful catastrophe.

And then?  After it?

It seemed to her that she was once more in the Park Lane drawing-room; the familiar Morris papers and Burne-Jones drawings surrounded her; and she and Elizabeth Tranmore sat, hand in hand, talking of William—­a William once more free, after much folly and suffering, to reconstruct his life....

“Here we are,” said Sir Richard Lyster, moving down a dark passage towards the brightly lit doorway of their hotel.

With a start—­as of one taken red-handed—­Mary awoke from her dream.

XX

Madame d’Estrees and her friend, Donna Laura, occupied the mezzanin of the vast Vercelli palace.  The palace itself belonged to the head of the Vercelli family.  It was a magnificent erection of the late seventeenth century, at this moment half furnished, dilapidated, and forsaken.  But the entresol on the eastern side of the cortile was in good condition, and comfortably fitted up for the occasional use of the Principe.  As he was wintering in Paris, he had let his rooms at an ordinary commercial rent to his kinswoman, Donna Laura.  She, a soured and melancholy woman, unmarried in a Latin society which has small use or kindness for spinsters, had seized on Marguerite d’Estrees—­whose acquaintance she had made in a Mont d’Or hotel—­and was now keeping her like a caged canary that sings for its food.

Madame d’Estrees was quite willing.  So long as she had a sofa on which to sit enthroned, a sufficiency of new gowns, a maid, cigarettes, breakfast in bed, and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most harmless and engaging of mortals.  Her youth had been cruel, disorderly, and vicious.  It had lasted long; but now, when middle age stood at last confessed, she was lapsing, it seemed, into amiability and good behavior.  She was, indeed, fast forgetting her own history, and soon the recital of it would surprise no one so much as herself.

It was five o’clock.  Madame d’Estrees had just established herself in the silk-panelled drawing-room of Donna Laura’s apartment, expectant of visitors, and, in particular, of her daughter.

In begging Kitty to come on this particular afternoon, she had not thought fit to mention that it would be Donna Laura’s “day.”  Had she done so, Kitty, in consideration of her mourning, would perhaps have cried off.  Whereas, really—­poor, dear child!—­what she wanted was distraction and amusement.

And what Madame d’Estrees wanted was the presence beside her, in public, of Lady Kitty Ashe.  Kitty had already visited her mother privately, and had explored the antiquities of the Vercelli palace.  But Madame d’Estrees was now intent on something more and different.